■•• . ■ ••;• ■ 1 - , . .-;. 



MY 

THREE KEYS 



MURRAY 





Class J 5V4-(3I0 

Book.JYL8 

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CQEVR1CHT DEPOSIT. 



MY THREE KEYS 

AND OTHER 

TALKS TO BOYS AND GIRLS 



MY THREE KEYS 

and Other Talks to Boys and Girls 



WILLIAM D. MURRAY 

and 
GEORGE M. MURRAY 




ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York: 347 Madison Avenue 
1920 



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Copyright, 1920, by 

The International Committee of 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



©CU605029 
vki> I 7 1920 



FOREWORD 



These talks have been given to boys and girls in high 
-r schools, preparatory schools, and Sunday schools, and to 

groups of Boy Scouts and YMCA boys. Some of them 
were given to soldiers in camp, and some in schools in the 
Near East. They are gathered together here in the hope 
that they may be helpful to other boys and girls who shall 
read them or hear them read, and that they may be suggestive 
to men and women who seek to influence young people 
through the spoken word. 

My son has been so helpful in the preparation of these 
talks that I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to him by 
associating him with me in the authorship of this book. 

Plainfield, N. J. William D. Murray. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword v 

I. My Three Keys I 

II. The Mother Hen and Her Chickens 4 

III. Children's Sunday 8 

IV. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 11 

V. Why a Boy Is Like a Watch 21 

VI. Anger 26 

VII. Faith 29 

VIII. Temptation 32 

IX. Selfishness ".' 36 

X. Obedience 39 

XI. Loyalty 42 

XII. Contentment 45 

XIII. Christmas 48 

XIV. Listening to God 51 

XV. Prayer 53 

XVI. The First Easter 57 

XVII. Children's Day 60 

XVIII. Rally Day 62 

XIX. When Jesus Came 65 

XX. A Birthday Talk 68 

XXI. Showing Our Love by Doing 71 

XXII. Secret Sin 74 

XXIII. By the Way 77 

XXIV. A Garden Talk 79 

XXV. The Lord's Supper 82 

XXVI. Giving Up 85 

XXVII. Our Guide 87 

XXVIII. Seeking Help 89 

XXIX. Faithfulness 91 

XXX. Thou Shalt Not Steal 93 

XXXI. Easter 96 

XXXII. Thanksgiving 99 

XXXIII. Heaven 101 

XXXIV. Gifts 104 

XXXV. A Missionary Talk 107 

XXXVI. The Bible no 

XXXVII. Jesus and the Children 112 

XXXVIII. Sunday 115 

XXXIX. The Speech That Never Was Delivered 118 

XL. Doing Nothing 121 

XLL Jesus Judged by His Disciples 125 

XLII. Jesus in Jerusalem 128 

XLIII. Loving Gifts 130 

XLIV. Unseen Helpers 132 

XLV. Seeking and Finding 134 



I 
MY THREE KEYS 

One day I decided that the bunch of keys I was carrying- 
was unnecessarily heavy. The keys had been slowly accu- 
mulating until there were a good many of them. There was 
the key to my office desk; I never needed that except when 
in the office, so I removed it from the ring and left it there. 
And here were a couple of keys to compartments in my safe ; 
those I needed only when I was near the safe, so they, too, 
were removed and left near the safe. And here was the key 
to my suit case; why should I carry that around with me? 

One by one the keys were detached from the key ring until 
only three were left ; these three I found I had to carry. One 
was to the door of my house, the second was to the door of my 
office, and the third let me into my church. And now I carry 
only these three — the keys to my home, my office, and my 
church. 

Are they not symbols of our indispensable needs ? A place 
to live, a place to work, and a place to worship — home, office, 
church. 

Home — a place to live. Is that all? A man can live in a 
house, but a home is much more than, a dwelling. There is 
an atmosphere about a real home which we all recognize, 
especially when it is absent. A home demands loyalty of 
those who live in it; it demands unselfishness and purity of 
life. When Jesus described heaven He could think of noth- 
ing better to call it than "My Father's house'' — the home 
where His Father dwelt. 

The home is the foundation of the state and of society, 
and what the home is determines largely what the citizens 
will become. How often we hear people say, "Oh, he didn't 
have a good home." Everybody needs a home; let us try to 

I 



2 MY THREE KEYS 

make our homes places where peace and happiness and help- 
fulness are always to be found. 

The second fundamental need is a place to work, an office 
or a shop. This world has no place for drones — we want 
men who work. Work is good for us. But it should be work 
into which our hearts can go. Remember, we ought to be 
more interested in making a life than in making a living. 
We should, of course, be fond of our work, we shall do it 
poorly unless we are; but try to get work that means char- 
acter building and not life destroying. There are so many 
kinds of work that pull men down. 

A man said to me the other day, speaking of the business 
he was in, "It's no business for an honest man." A short 
time ago I heard two church members discussing business 
methods and both said they couldn't do their business and 
keep the law. When I said, "You don't have to do business, 
you do have to keep the law," they laughed at me. Find work 
that helps you to live the Christian life while you are in it. 

And just as truly as a man needs a home and a workshop, 
he needs a place to worship — a church. We are more than 
mere animals: we instinctively turn to religion. All men 
seek the help of a higher power. In the home we cultivate 
the human relationships; the church gives us the opportunity 
of developing those that are divine. 

A man with a home to live in and a place to work in and 
a place to worship in is pretty sure to be a good citizen, a 
good workman, and a good father, husband, son, and brother, 
provided he makes the right use of these good things. 

One by one I laid aside my keys until only these three 
were left; so one by one we can lay aside clubs and theaters 
and other attractions, but never can we do without home, 
shop, and church. 

What we need is courage to live a pure, unselfish life in 
the home, to work faithfully, and to worship sincerely. These 
then are what every man needs : a place to live in, a place to 
work in, and a place to worship in. He cannot get along 



MY THREE KEYS 3 

without them. It is easy to see how much he needs a home ; 
we know he must work if he would live; it is harder, per- 
haps, to realize that he must worship. But the man who 
merely lives and works is little better than a machine; it is 
the man whose higher nature is developed by worship who 
can work hard and live well. 

Most men if they stopped working would starve; if they 
had no place to live in they would perish; and just as truly 
unless they worship, unless they recognize the need of a 
supreme Being, their real life, their eternal life, will be lost. 
"What shall a man give in exchange for his life?" Jesus 
asks. Work will not save it ; home -will not deliver it from 
peril; only God can. 



II 
THE MOTHER HEN AND HER CHICKENS 

It was the last Tuesday of Jesus' earthly life. On the 
preceding Saturday He had come up to Jerusalem with His 
little company of disciples. The end of His life was near 
at hand and He knew it. Each day He had gone into the 
great city with its swarming crowds; each evening He had 
gone back to the quiet of the home in Bethany. And at the 
close of the day He was on His way once more to that home ; 
He had reached the Mount of Olives where He could look 
out over the restless city, and, as He looked, these words 
sprang from His lips and heart: 

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often would I have gath- 
ered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood 
under her wings." 

It may be that on His way into Jerusalem that morning 
He had seen an old hen with her little brood; or perhaps at 
His home in Nazareth He had kept chickens himself. Any- 
how, as He gazed at the great, needy city, He exclaimed, 
"O people, how I would like to be to you what the old 
mother hen is to her little chicks." 

We shall understand, in part at least, what this longing of 
His heart was, if we try to realize why a hen gathers her 
brood under her wings. 

I once saw a mother hen going about in a barnyard with 
her chicks. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, she began her 
cluck ! cluck ! cluck ! The little ones ran to her as she 
squatted down and spread out her wings, under which they 
scampered. I had not seen the necessity of this action ; things 
seemed to be peaceful and quiet. Looking up, however, I 
saw where the trouble was: there, floating about in graceful 



MOTHER HEN AND HER CHICKENS 5 

circles, was the chicken's arch enemy, the hawk. I hadn't 
seen it; the little chicks hadn't seen it; but the watchful, lov- 
ing old mother had seen it. And she gathered her brood 
under her wings to protect them in time of danger. 

We are told that evil comes upon us like a lion, seeking 
whom it can attack. We may not realize its presence, any 
more than the little brood realized the presence of the hawk, 
but Jesus in such times of danger will be to us what the old 
mother hen was to her chicks. He sees the danger. He 
wants to protect us. 

Anyone who has ever watched a proud old hen strutting 
around with her peeping babies will remember how, once 
in a while, there comes a lull in the day's occupations; the 
feeding is over for the present, and the old mother settles 
down comfortably, and the little ones are soon snugly tucked 
under her wings. It seems as if she realized that they had 
done enough and needed rest, and so she gathers her brood 
under her wings just to rest them. This will occur a number 
of times during the day, and at evening she takes them in 
for the night. 

"Come unto me," Jesus said, "and I will give you rest." 
Sometimes Jesus did just this way with His disciples. One 
day when the crowds were pressing upon them, He said, 
"Come with me; let's cross the lake where there are no 
people, and there we can rest awhile." Today, as much as 
then, He wants us to go into some quiet place occasionally 
and rest with Him. 

They tell me that the best chickens are hatched in the 
early spring, so that very often the weather is none too 
warm when the mother hen comes off her nest and begins 
to forage with her tender little ones. She seems to realize 
the danger from cold, for many a time, if you watch, you 
will see her gather her brood under her wings just to warm 
them up a bit. It's soon over and they go back to their feed- 
ing, only to come back by and by to the mother's warmth. 
For they are too young and featherless to stand the cold by 



6 MY THREE KEYS 

themselves; they would die if left unprotected by a mother's 
warmth ; they must keep close to her to keep warm. 

How true this is of us ! Away from Him, who longed to 
be to us what the old hen is to her brood, we soon grow cold 
— not cold in our bodies so much as in our hearts. That is 
sometimes the way with a man who is greatly interested in 
church work. We say he is red hot. But by and by he loses 
interest and we say he has grown cool. Well, Jesus wants 
to keep us warm-hearted in His service. 

But there are times when there is no danger to guard 
against ; the little chicks are neither cold nor tired, but never- 
theless the old mother hen calls them in and they cuddle down 
under her wings. You can almost see a look of content- 
ment come over her as the last of the brood crawls under. 
I think she does it just because she loves to have them with 
her — she isn't doing anything for them; she just wants to have 
them all by herself. 

So Jesus took His disciples now and then away by them- 
selves that they might be alone together. And so nowadays 
He wants us to be with Him alone. He wants to be to us 
what the old mother hen is to her chickens when she just 
wants to feel them near her. 

He was often lonely when He was here upon this earth. 
One day He said sorrowfully to His disciples, the men He 
thought were His closest friends, "Will you go away, too?" 
Yes, although He is God He wanted human companionship, 
and He longs for it now. He is anxious to have us near Him 
as His close friends. 

It requires no theology to understand love like this, any 
more than it takes a knowledge of natural history to appre- 
ciate the mother love in a hen. If we can only think of our 
Lord as one who is as eager to protect, to nurture, to give 
rest to, and to enjoy His children as is the devoted mother 
bird, we need not bother much with the why and the where- 
fore of it all. 

But this is not the whole word that broke from Jesus' lips 



MOTHER HEN AND HER CHICKENS 7 

that day, "How often would I have gathered thy children 
together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, 
and ye would not" His willingness, "I would," stands over 
against their unwillingness, "Ye would not." The little chick 
who does not heed the mother hen's call when danger is 
near, or does not care for the rest and warmth of the mother 
wings, is sure to suffer. It is the little ones who trust the 
mother who are safe. The Psalmist put it into beautiful 
words when he said, speaking of God, "He shall cover thee 
with his feathers and under his wings shalt thou trust." 

I have read that one time a barn took fire. It was not 
consumed, most of it was left standing. When the fire had 
been put out and people could go inside, there on the barn 
floor they found an old hen, suffocated, and under her out- 
spread wings, dead, of course, was her little brood. She 
might have escaped herself, but she preferred to give her life 
in an effort to save those whom she loved. 

Jesus has been like that devoted mother hen. He has given 
His life, which He might have saved, in order that we might 
have life. And now He asks us to come under His wings, 
outspread for us. 

"Under His wings I am safely abiding; 
Though the night deepens and tempests are wild, 
Still I can trust Him; I know He will keep me; 
He has redeemed me and I am His child." 



Ill 
CHILDREN'S SUNDAY 

All days it seems to me are Children's Days, but it is good, 
I am sure, to have one special Sunday in the year which we 
call Children's Sunday. I have sometimes wondered who 
invented Children's Day, but, when you think of it, it is as 
old as the Bible. Long, long ago one of the prophets said 
that a day would come when the streets of the city would 
be full of boys and girls playing. He wanted to tell about 
a real, happy city and so he said it would be a place where 
it was always Children's Day. And you remember how 
Jesus said heaven will be filled with children — there, too, it 
will always be Children's Day. 

But if God thinks so much of children it means that He 
expects something of us. He wants us even now to do some- 
thing for Him. 

Dr. Schauffler tells of a little girl who ran to her mother 
almost crying, and said, "Oh, Mother, Charlie's setting traps 
for the birds." "Well," her mother said, "what did you do?" 
"I asked Charlie not to set the traps." "Is that all?" "No, 
then I prayed God not to let the birds go into the traps." 
"And did you do anything else?" "Yes," she said, "then I 
kicked the traps all to pieces." God likes to have us go to 
Sunday school and pray and learn Bible verses and sing our 
hymns, but I am sure he wants us to do something to show 
that we are Sunday school children. 

But some of you say, "We can't do anything, we are too 
little." Never say that. One day some flies, little as they 
were, stopped a great railroad train. On the outside of the 
car is a box in which the wheel turns on its axle, and in this 
box is put the oil, which runs through a little hole to the 
axle as it goes round. This train was running through 

8 



CHILDREN'S SUNDAY 9 

swampy ground where there were lots of flies and they kept 
getting into this axle box and of course the oil drowned them. 
As they died they dropped one by one into the hole through 
which the oil should run and stopped it up. When the oil 
didn't run the axle got hot, and as it got hot it swelled, until 
it got so tight in the iron that it couldn't go round at all and 
the train had to stop. The little flies had stopped the train. 
A little blister in the iron in the great Tay bridge caused it 
to fall. A grain of sand in the valve sank a French sub- / 
marine and killed thirteen people. Little things and little * 
people do count. 

It's good, of course, to go to Sunday school, but it's better 
to do something because we are Sunday school children, 
however small we are. 

One time there was an engine trying to pull a heavy freight 
train along a track that ran up a little hill, but it could only 
get up a little way and then it had to stop. Near by was 
the roundhouse. That's where the locomotives stay when 
they are not at work. So this locomotive on the freight train 
called over to a big engine it saw there and said, "I can't pull 
this train up this hill. Won't you come and help me ?" "No," 
growled the other locomotive, "my work is all done; I never 
run after five o'clock and now it's six. No, I can't help you." 
Then the locomotive called out again to another big engine 
it saw in the roundhouse. "Say, I can't pull this train up 
this hill, it's too heavy for me alone, won't you come and 
help me?" And this locomotive answered, "No, indeed; pull 
a freight train ! I never did such a thing in my life. I only 
pull parlor cars. I can't help you." There was only one 
more locomotive in the roundhouse, a little pony locomotive, 
one that was used to shift cars about in the yard. But the 
freight locomotive had to have help, so it called to this little 
one and said, "Maybe you will help me get this train up the 
hill. Can't you come and push?" And the little locomotive 
said, "Of course I'll come. I think I can help push you up 
the hill." So he ran out of the roundhouse and down the 



io MY THREE KEYS 

track and put his head against the rear car of the freight 
train and began to push, and all the time he was saying to 
himself, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can." The 
train began to run faster and faster and he had to say it 
faster and faster, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can," 
until at last the top of the hill was reached and the train 
easily ran down on the other side. Then the little locomotive 
backed away, and as it ran down towards the roundhouse, 
going faster and faster as it flew down hill, it kept saying 
to itself, "I thought I could, I thought I could, I thought I 
could." You can do it if you think you can. 



IV 
THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ 

A learned professor in Michigan University once recom- 
mended to me the use of a book which I have been very glad 
to read a good many times. It is a storybook, too. The 
story begins in Kansas, where they have cyclones — those 
great windstorms which whirl round and round, tearing up 
trees and destroying houses. 

A little girl named Dorothy is living in the home of her 
aunt Em, when one day one of these cyclones strikes the 
house. Round and round it whirls it, up and up and on and 
on it carries it, with only Dorothy and her little dog Toto 
in it. The journey is so long that Dorothy finally goes to 
sleep and is suddenly awakened when the house is at last 
dropped down on the ground with a thump. When she looks 
out of the window everything is strange; she doesn't know 
where she is, so she asks one of the queer little men standing 
there, and he tells her she is in the land of Oz. "But I live 
in Kansas, and I want to get back to my Aunt Em," Dorothy 
tells him. "Kansas, Kansas, where's that?" the little man 
replies. "We never heard of Kansas here." 

After some more conversation one of the little fellows sug- 
gests that she go to see the wonderful Wizard of Oz, who 
lives at the end of the yellow path to which he points. "Per- 
haps he can tell you how to find the way back to Kansas," 
her strange little friend remarks. So she thanks him and, 
taking Toto and a basket of lunch, starts to find the Wizard, 
walking along the yellow path which leads into the distance. 

As she trudges along by and by she grows tired and hungry 
and sits down by a cornfield to rest and eat. As she looks 
over the fence into the field she spies an old scarecrow stuck 
upon the end of a stick. You can imagine her surprise when 
she sees that he is winking at her. "Why," she exclaims, 

II 



12 MY THREE KEYS 

'"I didn't know you could do that." "Yes," says the Scare- 
crow, "and you see I can talk, too." 

So the two fell into conversation, and this new friend told 
Dorothy that he was very tired, having been up on the stick 
so long. "If I could only get my feet on the ground," he 
groaned. "Why, I can help you to do that," says Dorothy, 
and then she lifts him from the stick and puts his feet on the 
ground. But he soon finds that he can't walk. How could 
he when he had never learned? The first thing he knows 
he falls all in a heap on the ground? Dorothy lifts him up 
again, and after considerable work teaches him to walk. 

Then he asks her where she is going. She tells him how 
she had been carried away from her home in Kansas and set 
down in this strange land, and that she is on her way to see 
the wonderful Wizard of Oz, who lives at the* end of the 
yellow path and who is going to tell her how to get back to 
Kansas. "He must be a wonderful wizard," says the Scare- 
crow. "There's something I need very much. This head of 
mine is stuffed with straw, there are no brains in it. I wish 
the Wizard would give me some brains, I need them very 
much." "Come along with me," Dorothy says, "and see if 
the Wizard can't help you." So the two start out along the 
yellow path to find the home of the wonderful Wizard of Oz. 

They hadn't gone very far when the yellow path led 
through the woods and soon they were greatly frightened 
by a loud roaring. They looked over where the noise came 
from and saw a great big lion. They felt like running away, 
but he called out to them, "Don't be afraid, I'm a cowardly 
lion. I've lost all my courage. I don't know what to do; all 
the animals make such fun of me and I am afraid of them." 
"Why," Dorothy called to him, " come along with us. We 
are going to find the wonderful Wizard of Oz. Maybe he 
can help you. He's going to show me the way back to 
Kansas." "And I'm going to ask him to give me some brains 
in place of the straw that's in my head," said the Scarecrow. 
"I think he could give you some courage." "All right," said 



THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ 13 

the Lion, and away they trudged once more, Dorothy, the 
Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, along the yellow path 
to find the wonderful Wizard of Oz. 

By and by as they were walking along they saw over in 
the woods something shiny that looked like a man. When 
they got close enough they saw that it really was a man, a 
man all made of tin, standing with an ax raised up over his 
head as if he were chopping wood. "Who are you?" asked 
Dorothy. "They call me the Tin Woodman/' he answered. 
"I used to be a real man, but one day my ax slipped as I 
was cutting wood and cut off one of my feet. I had to do 
something so I had a tin foot put in place of it. Another time 
I cut off one hand and had a tin hand put on; so little by 
little, after various accidents, first one part of me and then 
another has been replaced by tin, until now I'm all tin." 

"But why do you stand there like that all the time?" Dor- 
othy asked him. "Oh, I got caught out in the rain, and my 
joints are rusted so that I can't move them. Couldn't you 
get my oil can over by that tree and oil me up a little, so 
that I can move ?" Dorothy was always ready to help people, 
so she picked up the oil can, and in a little while his joints 
were so loose that he could get his arms down and move his 
legs. When the Tin Woodman asked them where they were 
going they told him they were going to see the wonderful 
Wizard of Oz, who was going to do wonders for them. "Oh," 
he said, "there's something I need so badly. This body of mine 
is hollow; there's no heart in it. There's a young lady over 
in the village where I live whom I want to love, but how can 
I love her unless I have a heart to love her with? Do you 
suppose the Wizard could give me a heart?" "I'm sure he 
could," answered Dorothy, "come along with us and find out." 
So once more they started out along the yellow path that led 
to the home of the wonderful Wizard of Oz ; Dorothy to find 
the way back to Kansas; the Scarecrow to get brains; the 
Cowardly Lion to get courage; and the Tin Woodman to 
get a heart. 



i 4 MY THREE KEYS 

I think the man who wrote this story wrote better than he 
knew, for this is more than an interesting fairy story; it is a 
parable. For, strangely enough, this curious company of 
people was looking for three things every young man needs — 
brains, courage, and heart. And while our friends are walk- 
ing along the yellow path, let us see if this is not so. We 
will come back to them later. 

Do young men need brains nowadays? Of course, every- 
one has some gray matter inside his head which he believes 
to be brains, but there are all sorts of brains just as there are 
all sorts of automobiles, and some are better than others. 
I mean brains that amount to something. Do young men need 
such brains ? It may be you don't think you need brains very 
much now when you are young. You have good parents and 
kind friends who are using their brains for you, and you do 
not have to use yours very much. This may be true, but the 
time is not far off, a few years only, when you will have to 
use your brains, and now is the only time you will ever have 
to get them ready. When a man falls overboard it is too late 
then to learn to swim; he should have gotten ready for an 
occurrence of that kind. Unless you begin to stiffen up your 
brains when you are young, and keep at it, the time may 
come when you will have in your head, instead of good brains, 
only the flabby, useless stuff which cannot be relied upon 
when needed. 

Now, early in life, is the time for you to cultivate your 
brains by exercising them in the right kind of a way. May I 
tell you one or two things that will not help you a bit? One 
of the worst things you can do with your brains is to use 
them for reading trashy literature. They seem to get used 
to such stuff, and it becomes almost impossible to make them 
enjoy good literature. I know how strong the temptation 
is to read stories that thrill, but you will be starving your 
brains if you feed them such chaff. Don't do it. 

Another thing — indulgence in any kind of impurity, either 
in thought or in deed, has a well-known effect upon the 



THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ 15 

brains. It is this kind of thing that makes them flabby, so 
that they will not do their work when you want them to. 

Another thing that hurts boys' brains is smoking cigarettes. 
Tobacco contains a poison called nicotine. Of course, there 
is very little of it in one cigarette, although it is such power- 
ful poison that one fifteenth of a grain has been known to 
cause death. In smoking, the smoke ordinarily comes in con- 
tact with the lining of the mouth, but when a boy or a young 
man smokes cigarettes he usually inhales the smoke — takes 
it not only into his mouth, but into his lungs — which means 
that he exposes a surface of six hundred square feet to the 
smoke inhaled, and so gives the nicotine a fine chance to work. 
Every school-teacher who has had boys in his class will tell 
you that boys are dull and stupid at their lessons after smok- 
ing cigarettes. This means that the poison is working, it is 
making their brains dull, they don't work as they would if 
they were not poisoned. 

If you are a cigarette smoker, just try it for yourself. 
Smoke five or six cigarettes and then go to work at some 
problem in mathematics; at some other time, when you 
haven't smoked, try an equally difficult problem and see which 
problem is the easier to solve. Then be honest with yourself. 

The best way to get good brains is to give those you now 
have something to do that is worth while. Don't dawdle. 
Study when you study, read when you read, and hold your 
mind on your subject. Watch for times of wandering and 
call yourself back to your work. Cultivate right habits of 
thinking. Make up your mind that you will learn to do some 
one thing better than anyone else can do it. Why do people 
from all over the country travel out to that little town in 
Minnesota when serious surgical operations are thought of? 
It's because in that town there are two men who know how 
to do such things better than anybody else, and people want 
them. 

But I hear some of you say, "Brains are not the whole 
thing." That is so. Brains can be a curse. The best brains 



i6 MY THREE KEYS 

have sometimes been the means by which the most wicked 
purposes have been accomplished. 

Speaking one day to the 1,500 men in one of our state 
prisons, I asked the chaplain if any distinguished men were 
there. "Oh, yes," he said, "that man over there was a con- 
gressman; the leader of the orchestra was one of our judges; 
that man down there was a minister in this city." No, brains 
alone are not enough. With brains you must have what the 
lion was seeking — courage — courage to use your brains 
aright. Get courage. 

Now, as there are different kinds of brains, so there are 
different kinds of courage. When we speak of courage we 
usually think of physical courage — the kind the soldier or 
the football player has. This is good, but it is not the best. 
Every boy ought to be physically brave, and I think most 
boys and young men are. 

But there is another kind of courage which is better than 
mere physical courage ; it is the kind of courage those strong 
men showed on that awful night on the deck of the Titanic, 
when they stood aside to die and let the women and helpless 
children go into the boats to live. This is what we call moral 
courage — the morally brave boy is greater than the physically 
brave boy. 

Moral courage is the kind that enables you to stand for 
the right if you stand alone; to despise the unclean; to play 
the game for the game's sake, not merely to win. Moral 
courage helps you to sacrifice the present for the future — 
and what a lot of courage that takes. We have been laugh- 
ing for centuries at poor foolish Esau, who got things turned 
round and sacrificed the future for the present, as lots of 
boys and young men are doing today, simply for lack of moral 
courage. I remember so well those bright spring days in 
college when we used to see the fellows who were training 
for the crew getting ready for the great race in June. Oh, 
how some of them longed to stretch out on the grass and 
enjoy the warm air and the fellowship of the other boys ! 



THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ 17 

But no, they must give up present ease, and down to the 
river they must go, day and day, month after month, for a 
long, hot pull. It was hard, but do you suppose they re- 
gretted it, when, with accumulated skill, they sent their boat 
shooting over the line a winner ? Did they think then of the 
good times they had missed? Not a bit of it. Then I know 
they were glad that during those spring days they had had 
the courage to sacrifice the present for the future. 

How many men we see about us who amount to nothing 
because when they were boys they did not have the moral 
courage to give up the temporary pleasures of boyhood, that 
they might get ready for future manhood ! And, on the other 
hand, how many men there are, like Lincoln, who had the 
courage to give up some of the pleasures of boyhood, some of 
its ease, that the time might be used in preparing themselves 
for the future. 

Not long ago a friend of mine told me of a talk he had 
with a friend of his who was living at a rapid pace. "I don't 
see how you do it, Sam," my friend said to him. "How can 
you eat and drink and stay up nights as you do?" The an- 
swer was, "Don't you forget that I am having a first-rate 
time." They never saw each other again ; for, not a great 
while after that, the man who was having such a "first-rate 
time" died a lingering death, a bankrupt under indictment 
for a crime. He could not sacrifice the present for the 
future. 

One day some years ago I was sitting in my office when 
a man came in. He was poorly dressed; his trousers were 
fringed and his hat, once black, was faded. Under his arm 
he carried a cylindrical package done up in an old newspaper. 
At first I did not know him, but as I looked more closely I 
saw standing before me my old college chum, the only son 
of wealthy parents. He had in the package a quart bottle of 
ink, which he had bought for fifty cents, and he was going 
from office to office trying to sell it for seventy-five ! What 
had made this boy a tramp on the streets of New York? 



18 MY THREE KEYS 

Inability in youth to sacrifice the present for the future. I 
recalled how in college he had paid little attention to lessons ; 
he was bent on enjoying himself, everything had to give way 
to his pleasure. He lacked the moral courage which would 
enable him to sacrifice the present for the future. 

May I add one more word about courage? It is moral 
courage which enables a boy to live up to his resolution to 
have no pleasure that is bought at another's pain. A boy 
asks himself, "Shall I bet ?" The boy with moral courage can 
answer, "No, if I get any pleasure out of it someone else must 
get pain." Or he is tempted to an evil association with a 
young woman. Again he can say, "No, I can't do that; my 
pleasure will be her eternal sorrow." To brains then, add 
courage of the right kind — moral courage to guide you in the 
use of your brains. 

Again I hear you say, "Brains and courage are found in 
some pretty poor specimens," and you think of some brave, 
learned men who have disgraced humanity. Yes, it is clear 
that these are not enough. Something else must go along 
with brains and courage. It is what the poor Tin Woodman 
was seeking — heart. We understand very well what anyone 
means when he says of a young man, "His heart is not in 
it," and we wouldn't give much for his work unless it is. 
We are not surprised, therefore, when we find the Bible mak- 
ing so much of the heart : "Keep thy heart with all diligence ; 
for out of it are the issues of life." "Create in me a clean 
heart" "Blessed are the pure in heart." "As a man thinketh 
in his heart, so is he." 

That was a great thing those black men did when their 
great master, Livingstone, died in the wilds of Africa. As 
they were preparing his body to carry it to the sea coast to 
send it back to England, they first removed his heart and 
buried it in the soil of Africa, because, they said, his heart 
had been given for Africa. And so it had; he had given his 
life, and his heart was his life. 

To brains and courage we must, therefore, add heart. Put 



THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ 19 

your heart into your work, or as we sometimes say, do it 
heartily, and never do anything into which you cannot put 
your heart. For your heart is yourself. And as you are 
thinking of what work you would like to do, choose a voca- 
tion in life into which you can put your heart, and don't 
choose one not worthy of that great gift. 

Brains, courage, heart — does not every boy need all these? 

But to come back to our friends on the yellow path, whom 
we have almost forgotten, I fear. They finally reached the 
end of the path, and found the home of the Wonderful Wiz- 
ard of Oz. The poor Scarecrow in fear and trembling ex- 
plained to him the sad condition of his head, because of its 
lack of brains. The good Wizard made up a mixture of meal 
and bran, threw in a few pins and needles and tacks to add 
sharpness, and taking the straw out of the bag that formed 
the head of the Scarecrow, he filled it with this mixture, 
sewed it on, and away the Scarecrow ran, greatly rejoiced 
at the change. 

The Lion told of the indignities he had suffered from the 
other animals, because he had lost his courage. Going to a 
cupboard the Wizard took out a bottle labeled "Courage." 
This he gave the Lion to drink and as soon as he drank it, 
he began to roar and prance around as brave as ever. Back 
he went to the jungle to show the other animals what a 
real lion was. 

The poor Tin Woodman, with tears streaming down his 
tinny face, told the Wizard about the young lady whom he 
wished to love, and how troubled he was because he had no 
heart with which to love her. Going over to a bureau the 
Wizard took up a red flannel pincushion in the shape of a 
heart. This he hung inside the Tin Woodman's empty chest, 
and immediately, after thanking the Wizard, the Woodman 
ran off to find the young lady, and I presume they lived hap- 
pily together ever after. 

Dorothy, of course, told how she wished she could get 
back to Kansas. The Wizard sent her in one of his balloons, 



20 MY THREE KEYS 

and ultimately Aunt Em was surprised to see her walking 
into a new house that had been built. They got brains, cour- 
age, and heart. Can young men get them? 

Dorothy and her friends found a helpful Wizard and they 
found him by following the yellow path which led to his 
house. Is there a yellow path along which boys and young 
men may go? Is there a Wizard for them? There is. The 
path is a golden path, for it is the Bible, and those who go 
that way find the wonder-worker, of whom the Bible speaks, 
even Jesus Christ. He it is who is able to do wonderful 
things for any young man. When He was here upon the 
earth He gathered about Him a company of men who were 
not learned but men with very ordinary brains. But asso- 
ciation with Him gave them brains, so that the books some of 
them wrote are read more than any other books in the 
world today. More than once He met some poor fellow whose 
brains were all twisted and He straightened them out. 

These men whom He drew about Him were cowardly, for 
in the time of His extreme need, when He was in great 
danger, every single one of them ran away. But He gath- 
ered them together again and filled them with such courage 
that nothing could ever frighten them. And today He is 
so filling men with courage that in China they will boldly 
confess Him, though that confession means death. 

And heart? Yes, these disciples of His abandoned all for 
His dear sake; they gave themselves: He had changed their 
hearts from the poor things they had been to responsive, lov- 
ing hearts, beating in unison with His own great heart. And 
the only place where heart is found today is where this same 
wonder-worker is known and loved. 

Yes, this same Christ is living today; He is the same won- 
der-worker now that He was then; and He has said, "Ask 
and it shall be given you" ; "Him that cometh to me I will in 
no wise cast out." Come to Him and be changed. Let Him 
give you brains, courage, and heart, and then you will live a 
life that is worth while. 



WHY A BOY IS LIKE A WATCH 

A little while ago I visited a classmate of mine who is 
president of the company which makes the Ingersoll watches. 
He asked me if I would like to go through the factory and 
see what they were doing. Of course I was glad to accept 
his invitation and went through the great buildings with 
him. In one room he showed me 50,000 watches being regu- 
lated and told me that at that time they were turning out 
14,000 watches a day. I never saw so many watches in all 
my life. 

The next day I spoke to a company of boys at a school, 
and as I looked into their faces, I began to think how much 
a boy is like a watch. For instance, some watches are worth 
more than others, and this is true of boys. The reason why 
some watches are worth more than others is that one is made 
of good material and the other of poor ; one has works which 
have been carefully made, the other not. So with boys, the 
material of which they are made and the workmanship of 
the material very largely determine their value. Boys who 
through exercise, good habits, proper eating, and sufficient 
sleep have good bodies are worth more in every way than 
boys who have neglected and abused their bodies by indulging 
in habits, like smoking and impurity, which render their 
bodies less efficient. So the boy who is careful to train his 
mind by education is like the watch which is well made, while 
the boy who neglects his mental training is like the watch 
which is poorly made. I went to school with a boy who 
seemed to think that school was a sort of joke. He never 
studied if he could help it and he did everything that he could 
to make the schoolroom a place of entertainment for himself 
and a place of disturbance for others. I often see this same 

21 



22 MY THREE KEYS 

boy now, after the lapse of forty years, standing round the 
street corners unemployed, useless to everybody as well as to 
himself. He is like the watch that is poorly made. 

Another way in which a boy is like a watch is that the 
noisiest watch is not by any means the best watch. A Jur- 
gensen watch, costing $500, makes far less noise than an 
Ingersoll watch which costs only $2.50; and there is no com- 
parison between the two. So the boy who is always boasting 
of his exploits and making a great noise about what he has 
done is less reliable than the modest little fellow who does 
things and keeps quiet about it. 

Anybody who carries a watch knows how careful we have 
to be of it. A friend of mine had a watch which suddenly 
stopped running. He took it to a jeweler, who looked at it 
but could not determine what was the matter with it. He 
asked my friend to leave it with him, and to call in a few days. 
He did so and when he went back the jeweler said, "Mr. 
Smith, have you been anywhere near electricity ?" My friend 
replied, "Yes, a few days ago a friend of mine took me 
through his power plant." "That's it," said the jeweler, "the 
steel in your watch has been magnetized, because you have 
been near a great magnet, and the watch will be useless until 
we get the magnetism out." 

In the same way boys ought to be careful to keep away 
from things which prevent them from running true. Boys 
who go into temptation are like the watch that has been too 
near a magnet. Seeing certain kinds of pictures and hearing 
some kinds of stories will do for the boy's heart what the 
magnet did for the watch, and, therefore, just as we try to 
keep our watches going by taking care of them so boys who 
want to ring true should keep away from places of 
temptation. 

Not long ago I visited the Metropolitan Museum and saw 
there a collection of watches belonging to Mr. J. P. Morgan. 
In the collection there was one watch which attracted my 
attention more than any other because of its beauty. It was 



WHY A BOY IS LIKE A WATCH 23 

a hunting case watch and the outside was entirely covered 
with jewels — diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. It was by far 
the most beautiful watch in the large collection ; but the works 
were rusted, the hands -were broken, and it was plain that it 
never could tell time in its present condition. It was beauti- 
ful, but useless; for the important part of a watch is not the 
outside but the inside. An Ingersoll watch costing $2.50 
would be more useful as a watch than this beautiful one which 
perhaps cost $10,000. Here again a boy is like a watch; be r 
cause what is inside a boy is of more importance than what 
he has on the outside. I remember a boy who was in college 
with me, whose father died, leaving him about $100,000. He 
was always dressed in the height of fashion, with spotless 
linen, polished shoes, and expensive cravats, and anyone see- 
ing him walking down Chapel Street would have thought that 
he was a fine specimen of the college boy; but anyone who 
really knew him at all knew that inwardly he was rotten. 
He did everything that was wrong that a boy could do; his 
thoughts and his speech were vile. I was not surprised, 
therefore, some fifteen or twenty years later, when, one wet 
morning, a man looking like a tramp walked into my office, 
dressed in ragged clothes, with an unkempt beard, wanting 
to borrow fifty cents, to discover that it was the boy whom 
I had known in college and who outwardly appeared so beau- 
tiful but who inwardly was so unclean. He was like the 
watch that was beautiful on the outside. "Man looketh on the 
outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart," and 
as the good watch is the watch with the good works, no mat- 
ter whether the outside be brass or gold or copper, so the 
good boy is the boy whose inward parts are pure and clean. 
One morning I walked down to the depot, expecting to 
catch the 8:30 train as usual. My watch said it was 8:25. 
I found very few people there, and when after waiting five 
minutes I asked the station agent where the 8:30 was and 
he said it had gone, I was surprised. When I got to New 
York I took my watch to a jeweler and asked him what was 



24 MY THREE KEYS 

wrong with it. He opened the back, put that little spyglass 
on his eye, smiled, and said, "Why, Mr. Murray, I don't 
wonder." "What's wrong?" I asked. "Dirt," he replied. 
And that was why my watch went wrong and I missed my 
train: dirt had gotten into it. Here again a boy is like a 
watch — something gets into his heart and makes him go 
wrong. We call it sin. It is like dirt in a watch, and the 
only thing to do is for him to go, as I went with my watch, 
to someone who knows about the trouble. I took my watch 
to a watchmaker, not to a blacksmith or a butcher or a doc- 
tor; so a boy with sin in his heart must go to the One who 
knows about hearts and how to cleanse them. He must go 
with the prayer of the Psalmist, "Create in me a clean heart, 

God." 

One time I asked a class of men that I was teaching to 
write an essay on the subject which we are discussing, why 
a boy is like a watch. They suggested a great many simili- 
tudes which I cannot stop to speak about, but some of which 

1 will give you. A boy is like a watch because : 
He gives good time to other people. 

He keeps good time for a while and then becomes irregular. 

He suffers if put in the hands of a bad mechanic. 

He grows dearer as he grows older. 

He is sometimes ahead and sometimes behind. 

He is an intricate and complex mechanism. 

Regular winding, like regular habits, tends to make the 
watch keep good time. 

Some are open-faced and some closed. 

A watch needs adjustment, so does a boy. 

Both have jewels in them. 

We cannot get along without them. 

Each has a mainspring — a force which moves. 

When he gets a little older, there is generally a girl in 
the case. 

But I must refer to two or three more: A watch in order 
to be useful has to be wound up, and so does a boy. An un- 



WHY A BOY IS LIKE A WATCH 25 

wound watch is useless. A boy gets his winding through 
education in moral and spiritual things. An uneducated man 
is like an unwound watch, of no use for the purpose for 
which it was intended. 

• A watch may be a very good watch, but if it tells the wrong 
time it makes a great deal of trouble ; and so a boy who does 
not tell the right time — does not ring true — makes trouble for 
himself and others. Wrecks have been caused both on land 
and sea, because the watch on the train or the chronometer 
on the ship has been out a few seconds ; and the wrecks have 
injured not only those who were responsible for the incor- 
rect time, but those who were depending upon them. A boy 
with whom I used to go to school recently died in state 
prison because he had chosen all his life not to tell the right 
time; not only did this make a felon of him, but he had 
brought his mother to her grave and wrecked his father's life. 
Wrongdoing can be forgiven, but the injury once done to 
others cannot be undone. 

Lastly, the boy is like a watch in this respect: The watch 
did not make itself; the brass and steel and jewels that are 
in it did not say to each other, "We will get together and 
form a watch," but someone with a mind took the brass, the 
steel, and the jewels, shaped them into the proper forms, put 
them in their proper places, and brought forth a watch. So 
it seems to me no one can look at a boy without being sure 
that some higher being, with a mind, brought together the 
love and affection and reasoning powers and the personality 
which go to make up a boy. In the very beginning God said, 
"Let us make man in our image after our likeness," and it 
was He who made the boy. 



VI 
ANGER 

During the World War I am sure a good many of us 
thought often of what Jesus said one day, "Blessed are the 
peacemakers/' and of those other Bible words, "Be not hasty 
in thy spirit to be angry." If people do forget and are angry 
then the happy man, the blessed man, is the one who makes 
peace between them. There is a story in the Bible about 
two men who became angry and a beautiful woman who was 
the peacemaker. One man who got angry was David, a man 
whom God loved very much and for whom God had done a 
great deal. Nevertheless he got angry, lost his temper, as 
we say. This is how it happened: Nabal, a rich shepherd, 
lived with his wife, Abigail, in Carmel. Nabal was cross 
and ugly. His servants didn't like him, but Abigail, on the 
other hand, was " of a beautiful countenance." 

In the country where Nabal lived there were a good many 
robbers and wild beasts, so that Nabal had to have men to 
watch his sheep while they were in the fields. Near by David 
and his men were hiding from King Saul, and oftentimes 
David's men would help these shepherds care for their sheep 
and beat off the robbers. And now the sheep had been gath- 
ered together in one place to be sheared — to have the heavy 
wool cut off so that it could be used to make cloth. 

As David and his men needed food, he sent ten of them to 
ask Nabal to give them something to eat. Although these 
men were very polite, Nabal was angry at them and at 
David and wouldn't give them anything. He answered the 
messengers very harshly, and said he couldn't do anything 
for them. When they got back to David and told him what 
Nabal had said, David was mad, as mad as he could be. He 

26 



ANGER 27 

called his men together and had them put on their swords 
and he started out to find Nabal to kill him and his wife and 
all his family. You see how angry he was ! Now, one of 
Nabal's servants had seen how he treated David's messengers 
and he was worried. He went to Abigail and told her how 
kind David and his men had been to them and how angry 
Nabal was and how crossly he had spoken. Abigail knew 
that David would get angry, too, so she made up her mind 
that she would have to try to make peace between the two 
angry men. 

The Bible tells us about the present she prepared for David 
— two hundred loaves of bread, two bottles of wine, five sheep 
ready to be cooked, a lot of corn and raisins and figs. All 
of this stuff she put on a horse's back and sent her servant 
with it ahead of her when she started to see David. Pretty 
soon she met him coming along with his armed men. David 
looked angry and cruel, so that Abigail got off her horse 
and knelt down before him and asked that she might speak 
to him. Then she told him how she hadn't seen his messen- 
gers when they came to the house; only her husband had 
seen them. "Blame me," she said. "Don't blame my husband. 
Your men didn't come to me. I didn't know anything about 
it. Take this present which I have brought." And then she 
gave David the bread and the sheep and the figs and all the 
other good things she had brought him. 

David was greatly pleased, especially because Abigail had 
kept him from committing a great sin when he was angry. 
You know how people do bad things when they are angry. 
He thanked Abigail and told her it would be all right; she 
could go home in peace. Both of them must have felt happy 
at the peace that was made. 

But Abigail made one mistake. When she went out to 
meet David to make peace between him and Nabal she didn't 
tell her husband what she was going to do. I think it would 
have been better if she had, for when she got back from her 
visit to David and told her husband about it, although it had 



28 MY THREE KEYS 

been successful and had saved Nabal from David's anger, it 
seems to have made him so angry that he died. 

What a terrible thing it is to get angry ! "Be not hasty in 
thy spirit to be angry." "Blessed are the peacemakers.' 



VII 
FAITH 

What is this ? A dollar, you say. Well, we call it a dollar, 
but it is really only a piece of paper with some printing on it. 
I don't suppose the paper itself is worth more than a cent, 
but we know very well that we can take it to the store and 
spend it for a hundred cents' worth of anything we want to 
buy. How does it happen that this little piece of paper, itself 
worth less than a cent, is really worth a hundred cents ? I'll 
tell you. It is because there is printed on this bit of paper 
these words, "This certifies that there has been deposited in 
the Treasury of the United States one silver dollar payable 
to the bearer on demand." This means that in Washington, 
in that big building they call the Treasury Building, there is 
a silver dollar which I can get, any time I take this piece of 
paper and ask for it. 

You ask me, how do I know it's there and that I can get it ? 
W T ell, I believe what it says on this paper; I trust the United 
States; I have faith in my country. That is what we call 
trust or faith, the same sort of faith the Bible speaks about. 

A little boy was put to bed by his mother ; then she turned 
out the light and said to him, "Now, Charlie, I'll sit in the 
next room while you go to sleep." Do you suppose he was 
afraid? Not at all. He had faith in his mother, and snug- 
gled down in bed and went trustfully to sleep. One time a 
father went down into a dark cellar to fix something that had 
broken. On the floor above was his little daughter. As she 
looked down into the cellar, through the opening down which 
her father had gone, she could see nothing — it was black 
darkness. She called to her father and he answered her. 
Then she said, "I want to come down there." Her father 
said, "All right," and he came and stood under the opening. 

29 



3 o MY THREE KEYS 

In the dark of the cellar she couldn't see him, but he could 
see her up there in the light. And when he said, "Now jump, 
Father is here and will catch you," she was afraid at first, 
for though she could hear his voice she could not see him — 
there was just a black hole. But he said again, "It's all right; 
Father is right here; jump and I will catch you." Then she 
just jumped without seeing, and of course her father caught 
her. She trusted her father; she had faith that he would do 
what he said. 

The Bible tells us the most wonderful stories about people 
who had faith in God. You remember what Daniel and his 
friends said when they were told they would be put in the 
furnace of fire, if they worshiped any god but the King : "Our 
God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning 
fiery furnace, and He will deliver us." Job, that good man, 
had all sorts of trouble and even his wife tried to shake his 
faith, but he said something like this: "No, I trust my God. 
Even if He should see fit to kill me I would still trust Him." 
And so we could read the stories of Elisha, David, Moses, 
Noah, and all the others who trusted God — had faith in God. 

I suppose it is hard sometimes to have faith when we can't 
see. But that is what faith is — trusting when we can't see. 

An old doctor was called one stormy night to see a patient 
who was greatly frightened because of an attack he had had. 
He knew that sometime one of these attacks would be the end. 
He had no faith in God and so he said to the old doctor, 
"You are a member of the Church. I have no religious be- 
lief. Tell me, for the love of God, what is there beyond?"' 
The old doctor answered, "I don't know." And then his 
patient asked, "Are you not afraid of what may be beyond?" 
"No," said the good doctor, "may I ask you to look here?" 
He opened the door and there lay his dog. "This is my dog. 
He has followed- me through the storm and has been lying 
outside the door, knowing that I was in the room. He never 
was here before. He did not know what was in this room. 
He did not care to know. He knew I was in it, his master, 



FAITH 31 

whom he loves, and who has cared for him. He was not 
afraid. And I am not afraid. I know that my Master who 
loves me is in the place to which I am going and that is 
enough." 



VIII 
TEMPTATION 

Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth, "There hath no temp- 
tation taken you but such as man can bear : but God is faith- 
ful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are 
able; but will with the temptation make also the way of 
escape, that ye may be able to endure it." He knew what a 
wicked city Corinth was and how surely the Christians there 
would be tempted to sin, and so he wrote these encouraging 
words to them, "Yes, you will be tempted; but God has 
made a way out for you." Everybody is tempted; and it is 
no sin to be tempted. The sin is in yielding to temptation. 
I think it was Luther who said, "I can't prevent the birds 
from flying over my head, but I can prevent them from build- 
ing nests in my hair." We can't prevent temptation's com- 
ing; we can, by God's grace, "endure it." We can escape 
from it. One of the ways of escape I am sure is found in 
the example of Jesus. 

At the very beginning of His life work, just after He had 
been baptized and His heavenly Father had called Him his 
beloved Son and had said He was well pleased with Him, 
Jesus was sorely tempted. 

He was hungry and the Tempter came to Him and said, 
"Make bread out of these stones and satisfy your hunger." 
To understand how great a temptation this was we must 
remember what Jesus was trying to do. He wasn't living for 
Himself, but He was trying to get people to acknowledge God 
as their Father and accept Him as king. He was trying to 
establish God's Kingdom on the earth. Satan was saying to 
Jesus in this first temptation: "You want to establish God's 
Kingdom on the earth; let the people see that you can feed 

32 



TEMPTATION 33 

them by making bread out of stones and they will make you 
king quickly enough: that's the kind of a king they want." 
And you know that's exactly what they tried to do a year or 
so later. You remember how after He had fed the five 
thousand people with the bread and fish the little boy gave 
Him, they wanted Him to be their king. But Jesus said, "No, 
I can't do it that way. God's Kingdom can't be established 
merely by satisfying physical wants, by giving people material 
things. It must come by God's word." 

The same temptation comes to every boy and girl — the 
temptation to be content with satisfying physical wants. It 
isn't hunger nowadays, but it's the cry of the physical nature. 
It may be to some form of impurity, or to intemperance in 
drink. But it's the same old temptation which Jesus endured. 
Or it may be in the form of a temptation to seek satisfaction 
in material things, rather than in spiritual. It often is seen 
when a boy or girl seeks popularity or social honors, and 
uses wrong methods to attain good ends. Let our answer be, 
"No, not that way, but God's way." 

After a while the Tempter came back with another propo- 
sition: "You want to succeed in what you are trying to do. 
I'll show you how you can do it. Jump down unhurt from 
the top of the Temple into the crowd of people in the court 
below and create a sensation; be spectacular, and they'll 
crowd into your Kingdom." But again Jesus said, "No; I 
must take the slow way of winning men one by one." 

This, too, is our temptation, boys and girls — the temptation 
to be superficial, to study for marks rather than to master 
a subject, to take the easy courses so as to get through, to 
play the game merely to win instead of for the game's own 
sake. It's the temptation of the gambler who wants to get 
something for nothing; the temptation to put quantity before 
quality. Let us, like Jesus, refuse to be deceived by this 
temptation. 

Then came the most subtle of all the temptations that Jesus 
endured that day. Here on one side was the Devil, the prince 



34 MY THREE KEYS 

of this world, and on the other Jesus, anxious to establish His 
Kingdom. The Tempter showed Jesus all the kingdoms of 
the world and said: "Enter into a partnership with me; fall 
down and worship me and I will give these kingdoms to 
you." They certainly were his; anyone who knows anything 
about Roman history knows that when Jesus was beginning 
His work the kingdoms of the world belonged to Satan. And 
now Jesus was longing for those kingdoms and Satan said, 
"I'll give them to you; they are mine; just form an alliance 
with me and they are yours." It was a temptation to an 
unholy alliance, a temptation to choose the wrong partner. 
And Jesus wouldn't yield to it. 

How that temptation comes to boys and girls today! It's 
a temptation to compromise, to let down a little, watching 
to get into a crowd that can help rather than a crowd where 
one can be helpful. Or it's a temptation to choose compan- 
ions whose influence is not for the best things, just because 
such companions have some of the things we want. Let us 
boldly and bravely say to the Tempter, as Jesus said, "I've 
had enough of you ; I will go God's way." 

And I do not think we can ever do better when tempted 
than to follow the example of Jesus when He was tempted. 
Each time He saw the danger because He knew what the 
Bible said about it; He realized that Satan was a liar, and 
that the Bible was true. So we need to study our Bibles if 
we are going to escape in times of temptation. This is one 
of the ways of escape God has provided. The Psalmist said, 
no doubt thinking of temptation, "Thy word have I hid in 
my heart that I might not sin against thee." That is exactly 
what Jesus had done. Back in Nazareth His mother had 
taught Him those wonderful verses which He used with the 
Devil there on the mountain. 

Jesus refused the help of earth and got the help of heaven, 
for in the story we read, "The devil leaveth him, and behold, 
angels came and ministered unto him." The messenger of 
the underworld left and the messengers of the upper world 



TEMPTATION 35 

came. And so it will be always. God won't leave us alone : 
He will send His angels to help us. "God is faithful." 

Jesus was tempted, no doubt, at other times, for at the 
very end of His life He could look back and say, "The prince 
of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." He had suc- 
cessfully overcome every temptation: He was without sin. 
May it be our joy to say this, too. 



IX 
SELFISHNESS 

A little girl once told me that when her class was dis- 
missed in school all the children would begin to call out to 
the maid who helped them, 'Tut my rubbers on first ; put my 
coat on first." And I have seen children at table who always 
wanted to be helped first. Did you ever see any like that? 
And I've seen boys in Sunday school, who, as soon as the 
school was over, would crowd and push and try to get out 
first. Do you know what such children are called? 

There are just two kinds of people in the world — those who 
are like sponges and those who are like candles. A sponge, 
you know, soaks up everything and draws it into itself and 
keeps it; a candle throws out light and slowly uses itself up. 

Things that we just get and keep are not much good. 
What use would wheat be if we stored it away in barns and 
never used it? Of course, it's good to be careful of our 
money, but if we merely put it away and kept it as a miser 
does, never using it, what good would it do us or anybody 
else? Then there's love. I may have lots of love, but if it's 
only for myself it's a pretty poor kind of love. No, we must 
use what we have and we must use it for others. 

How many times we see boys or girls in a family who ask 
for things just for themselves ! Haven't you done that? We 
do it without thinking of the other boys and girls in the 
family. That is the way it was with James and John, two 
of Jesus' disciples. I am sure He liked to have His friends 
ask Him for what they wanted — He told them to ask; but 
I am just as sure that He did not like these two men when 
they asked Him one day for something. They came to Him 
and said, "Lord, when you get to heaven and we get there 

36 



SELFISHNESS 37 

won't you give us the best places?" Jesus turned to them 
and said, "You don't know what you are talking about." I 
think it was because they were so selfish — they wanted the 
best for themselves and Jesus didn't like men who were 
selfish. 

One time an old man and a young man came to a place 
where they had to separate. Both kept sheep and where they 
lived there wasn't room for both. So they went out to a hill 
where they could look over the land and the older man, Abra- 
ham, said to Lot, the younger man, "I'll let you choose first." 
That was unselfish, wasn't it? You would have thought the 
younger man would have said, "No, that wouldn't be right: 
you are older than I, you choose first." But he didn't say 
anything of the kind. He looked out over the land and he 
saw a place that looked fertile and well watered, and that 
seemed to be the best land, and he just said, "I'll take that 
over there," and he took it. 

Jesus said He wanted to be unselfish: "The Son of man 
came not to be ministered unto but to minister." That was 
the kind of life He wanted to live. He was eager to help 
other people, not anxious to be helped by them. 

There is a story that in a certain country there was a 
dipper covered with diamonds, which would bring a great 
blessing to anyone who found it. Whenever a baby was 
born, as soon as it could understand they told him about the 
diamond dipper. 

One day a little child was told the story by his mother, who 
gave him a tin dipper so that he would know what a dipper 
looked like as he went about hunting for the diamond dipper. 
He got very tired and thirsty searching for the beautiful dip- 
per, but he could find no water. So he closed his eyes and 
prayed that his dipper might be filled, and when he looked — 
there it was full of water. 

As he walked along he spied a poor flower nearly dead for 
lack of water; so he poured some on it, and when he started 
to take a drink himself he was surprised to find that there 



38 MY THREE KEYS 

was as much water in the dipper as ever, and the dipper itself 
had turned to silver. 

While he was looking at it a poor dog came panting along, 
with his tongue hanging out with thirst. The boy took a 
little of the water in his hand and gave him a drink and sud- 
denly the dipper changed to gold. 

Then he thought, "Now surely I can take a drink myself." 
But just then a poor man came along and begged a drink. 
The boy lifted up the dipper and let him drink all he wanted, 
and as he gave it to him he thought he heard someone say, 
"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren ye did it unto me," and the man was gone. He 
had forgotten his own thirst in the joy of helping others and 
when at last he lifted the dipper to take his own drink, lo and 
behold, it was covered with diamonds 



OBEDIENCE 

One Sunday morning I stood before a company of 1,500 
men all dressed alike, who had marched into church in squads 
of fifty, each with a leader. They were in prison. As I 
looked at them I couldn't help thinking that each one of 
them had once been a bright-faced boy, running around as 
free as the air, and here they were shut in by stone walls, 
going where others told them to go and not free to go where 
they pleased. What had made the change? I can tell you 
in one word — disobedience. They had broken the laws of 
the state and were being punished by the state. 

Once when I was a little boy my father took me to a city 
where there were great buildings and beautiful grounds. 
There were men and women in the buildings and walking 
along the paths, but none of them were allowed to go outside 
the great iron fence which surrounded the place. These 
people were insane; they were not allowed to do as they 
pleased; they had to do what others told them to do. And 
again it was disobedience. Either they or their parents or 
grandparents had disobeyed nature's laws and they were 
being punished for their disobedience. 

For nearly forty years a huge company of people led by 
that great man, Moses, had wandered around in a desert. 
They were trying to go from Egypt to the Promised Land, 
a journey they could have made in forty days, and here they 
were spending forty years on the way. What was the mat- 
ter? Again it was disobedience, and God had to say to them 
that He was tired of them and that they should be "wan- 
derers in the wilderness for forty years." All who were over 
twenty years of age should die and only "the little ones" 

39 



4 o MY THREE KEYS 

should get into the Promised Land. Disobedience killed a 
whole nation. 

But one of the saddest stories of disobedience, I think, is 
found almost at the beginning of the Bible. Two people — a 
man and his wife — are standing just outside a beautiful gar- 
den in which they used to live. God had prepared this garden 
for them. In it He had put everything they needed for food 
and for comfort. He had given it to them, but He had said 
to them, "All this is yours. You can do as you like with it; 
but there is just one tree whose fruit you are not to eat." 
And do you know, those two people with everything any- 
body could long for weren't satisfied, but disobeyed and ate 
of the fruit of that forbidden tree. 

And they were driven out of their beautiful home, being 
punished for their disobedience. It's a sad story, but it's an 
old, old story — disobedience brings punishment. 

But we must remember, too, that obedience brings blessing. 
Abram was living with his father in a place called Ur. One 
day God came to him and told him He wanted him to leave 
his home and go to another country. It isn't hard to think 
of what Abram might have said, for we know what boys and 
girls say when they are asked to do something they don't 
quite understand. He might have said, "It's all right here," 
or "It's a long journey and I'm afraid," or "I don't know 
the way," or made a lot of other excuses. But he didn't say 
anything of the kind — he just packed up and started. Always 
after that God spoke of Abraham, as he was called, as His 
friend, because he obeyed. And Jesus said the same about 
us : "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," 
that is, "if you obey me." 

One of the wisest men that ever lived wrote these words 
in the Bible: "Children, obey your parents in all things." 
He knew how important it was to obey; he knew how dis- 
obedience brought punishment and how obedience brought 
blessing. And I think he put in those words "all things" 
because he knew we would be tempted to think that it didn't 



OBEDIENCE 41 

matter when it was some very little thing we were thinking 
about. You know the story of the little fish. His mother had 
tried to tell him what a hook looked like and how dangerous 
it was. But one day he saw a hook dangling in the water, 
with a nice worm on it, and he said to himself, "I'll bite at 
it just this once; once won't make any difference." But it 
did; it made all the difference in the world to that little fish. 
You never can tell — it may be just that one disobedience 
that will spoil everything. 

One day a father asked his son to drive a stake in a certain 
place in the yard to hold up the grapevine. He refused to 
do it, and when his father insisted the boy struck him in the 
face and then ran away from home. Naturally he did not 
become a better boy away from home, and one day he stole 
something and was arrested. He was sent to prison for 
sixteen years. He was ashamed to write to his father; but 
when he got out of prison he wrote a letter, to which he got 
no answer. Then he became a wanderer. One day he came 
back to the village. His father was dead. He went to the 
cemetery and looked at the grave where he was buried. The 
next day some of the village people found a stake driven in 
the ground beside the father's grave, on which was written, 
"Father, I will obey you." How much sorrow his disobedi- 
ence had brought him ! 



XI 
LOYALTY 

When my boy was about ten years old I took him to see 
a Yale-Princeton football game. He had always been des- 
tined for Yale. We brought along a young friend of his who 
lived near by, who had no special college affiliations. We 
were watching the players surge back and forth, when, seeing 
a good play by the Princeton team, our little friend jumped 
up and began to join heartily in the cheering. My boy was 
on his feet in an instant, looking as angry as a ten-year-old 
could. Glaring at the other boy he burst out, "You Dago ! 
What did we bring you for?" 

That is what we call loyalty, at least one form of it. It 
was the same sort of loyalty that brought the tears to the 
eyes of a great big German on a street in London just after 
the war was declared, when he found he could not get back 
to fight for his country. It was loyalty that made Living- 
stone, sick as he was, turn round and go back into the forest 
instead of sailing for home. He had promised his black 
servants that if they went to the coast with him he would 
see them safely home again. 

Some one has defined loyalty as the willing, practical, and 
thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause. One of the 
finest illustrations of such loyalty is found in the story of 
Ruth. Elimelech and Naomi had found it hard to get along in 
Judah, so with their two sons they had left the homeland and 
had moved to Moab, where they heard that times were 
better. By and by Elimelech died and the two sons grew up 
and married Moabites, one of them marrying Orpah and the 
other Ruth. But after a while both of Naomi's sons died 
and the three widows were left alone in the world. Naomi 
had heard that things were more prosperous now in her own 

42 



LOYALTY 43 

country, and she decided to go back to her old home. She 
told her two daughters-in-law what she intended to do. They 
had learned to love Naomi and would like to have stayed with 
her, but she thought it would be better for them to remain 
in their own country. Nevertheless, she let them go part 
way with her. Then when the time came to part they had a 
good cry together, and kissed each other and hardly knew what 
to do. Finally Orpah left them and went back to her old 
home, but Ruth wouldn't go back. She threw her arms around 
her mother-in-law's neck and said she didn't want to leave 
her, but wanted to follow her back to her country. "For," 
she said, "whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou 
lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy 
God my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I 
be buried : the Lord do so to me and more also, if aught but 
death part thee and me." Her devotion was willing, thor- 
oughgoing, and practical. And many a man, as he has 
pledged his loyalty to the woman who becomes his wife, has 
had a reference to these words engraved on the wedding ring. 

First, then, you must have a worthy cause. Some may have 
one cause, and some another ; with Ruth it was her mother-in- 
law. At one time one cause will make the supreme appeal, 
at another time some other equally laudable end will seem 
most important. It may be home or business, school or col- 
lege, church or Sunday school or Y. M. C. A.; it may be 
our country, both at peace and at war. But first of all, the 
loyal man must have a worthy cause. There must be some- 
thing to which he can be devoted. 

The writer who defined loyalty as I have given it above, 
says that there are many things a loyal man does with his 
cause to show his loyalty. Let us suppose that the cause to 
which you wish to show your loyalty is the Church. Then 
first of all you will hold it before your mind. You will keep 
saying to yourself, "Will what I do now help or hinder the 
progress of the Church? If people see me here, doing what 
I am now doing, will they think more or less of the Church ?" 



44 MY THREE KEYS 

That is, you will always be thinking of the effect of your 
conduct as one loyal to the Church. 

Then again the loyal man treats his cause impartially; he 
is not biased by personal feeling. He recognizes that his 
cause is bigger than he is. He will try to get the right ideas 
of what his cause is, be it school or church or country. If 
it is his country, he sees that a call to the colors is to be 
obeyed because the welfare of his country is more important 
than his personal comfort and safety. 

A loyal man tries also thoroughly to understand his cause. 
If the cause is the Church, he tries to see what the Church 
is. A recent writer says we are too apt to look upon the 
Church from an agricultural viewpoint rather than a military 
one — as a field to be cultivated rather than a base from which 
a holy war can be carried into the enemy's country. 

Of course the loyal man will love his cause passionately 
and will serve it practically. He will do something to show 
his loyalty. If his cause is his religion and he is thrown 
into company with a lot of men or boys, as at a school or a 
military camp, he will read his Bible and pray night and 
morning, like the recruit at Fort Ethan Allen who quietly laid 
his Bible on his trunk in his tent and said to his tent-mates, 
"That is my Bible. I read it daily. If any of you boys would 
like to join me, come on — but I shall read it." 

Some loyal boys from that great school at Uppingham of 
which Thring was the head master were oft on a vacation. 
One Sunday some one in the group proposed an excursion 
which was not just what these boys would have indulged 
in at home. One of the boys said, "No, we can't do that. 
Thring wouldn't like it." He put his loyalty into practice. 

In war days we admire most not the men who stand cheer- 
ing on the sidewalk, but the brave young fellows who march 
down the street on their way to the front. They are the loyal 
men ; they are practically serving the country they love. And 
so in church or school — the loyal man is not content to talk 
about it, he does something for it. 



XII 

CONTENTMENT 

One day a little girl sighed and said, "I wish I could be 
something else." "What would you like to be?" asked a 
little voice. <4 I would like to be a rosebud," the girl replied. 
Suddenly she felt herself changing and soon she was a rose. 
How pleasant it was to be a rosebud ! By and by a fairy 
came along and said, "I think I'll eat the rosebud for dinner." 
"Don't, don't," the little girl called out. "If you do you'll 
eat my head." This made the fairy laugh and the little girl 
cried out, "Please make me something else, quick. Make me 
into a bird." 

In a few minutes she was a bird hopping around in the 
grass. "This is great fun," she exclaimed, "but how hungry 
I am." "Are you?" said the little voice. "Then I'll feed you," 
and in front of her stood an ugly little man with a big green 
worm, which he tried to put in her mouth. She screamed out, 
"I won't eat that horrid worm ! I'm not a real bird ! I'm 
a — I'm a — " Just then she woke up and found she had been 
dreaming. As soon as she saw her mother she said, "Oh, 
Mamma, Mamma, I'd much rather be a little girl than any- 
thing else." 

Yes, one of the most difficult things for children to do is 
to be contented where they are and satisfied with what they 
have. I knew a boy who was very fond of bananas. He 
never was satisfied with the one his mother gave him — he 
always wanted more. Well, one day he had a chance to eat 
as many as he wanted to, so he kept on eating them until he 
had eaten I don't know how many. Anyhow, they were 
enough to make him sick and for years after that he could 
hardly look at a banana; he certainly couldn't eat one. I 

45 



46 MY THREE KEYS 

have read somewhere of a man who was told he could have 
all the money he could carry away in his pocket. All around 
him were silver coins. He began to fill his pocket until it 
bulged out with money. Then, when he had taken what he 
thought was enough (he would have taken more if he could), 
he started away with it. But it was so heavy that it tore 
his pocket loose and before he knew it he had lost it all. 
Then he said to himself, sadly, "If I had taken less, I should 
have more." I suppose that's the way the boy felt who ate 
the bananas — if he had been content with fewer, he would 
have enjoyed them more. 

Paul, that great man who wrote so many books in the 
Bible, once said that he had learned wherever he was to be 
contented. And Paul was often in places where you wouldn't 
expect anybody to be contented. But he knew his heavenly 
Father was taking care of him and so he was satisfied to 
leave it with God. Read in his letter to the Corinthians all 
the uncomfortable things that happened to him (II Cor. 
11:23-29). Even after all those hardships he could say, "I 
have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be 
content." 

Haven't you seen boys who wanted stamps that other boys 
had? Or a girl who was not satisfied with her own doll but 
wanted one like Mary's? Did you ever see school children 
who wanted vacation all the time? Yes, it is easy to be 
dissatisfied, discontented with our own things, when we see 
what other people have. 

Mrs. Laura E. Richards tells of a boy on a farm who 
could look across the valley to another farmhouse on 
a hill, where there was a house whose windows seemed 
to be made of gold and diamonds. Then the people 
seemed to put up the shutters. The boy thought they did 
this because it was supper time. One day he went over to 
the house with the golden windows, but when he got there 
they looked just like other windows. Then he met a little 
girl who, when he asked her, said that they had no golden 



CONTENTMENT 47 

windows. "The golden windows are over there," she said, 
and she pointed over the valley to his house. And, sure 
enough, when he looked the golden windows were in his 
house. He went home a much more contented boy. 



XIII 
CHRISTMAS 

As the time draws near Christmas I like each year to take 
some part of the Christmas story and think about it, turning 
it over in my mind, so that I really live it over again in my 
own experience. 

This year I've been thinking about two verses in the first 
chapter of John's gospel. When you first read them you 
might not think they had much to do with Christmas, but 
let us see. 

John has been telling how Jesus was God and had always 
lived — how He had lived with His Father before this world 
was made, how He made the world. He even says, "Without 
Him was not anything made that was made." Then he tells 
how at last God came to live in His world — the world He 
made, the world that was His world. Then John says, and 
this is the first of the two verses I've been thinking about: 

"He came unto his own and his own received him not." 
Or, as some would read it: "He came unto his own things 
and his own people received him not." 

"He came unto his own things." The world was His, for 
He made it: He came to that. He came to Judea, the home 
of His earthly ancestors. They had been looking anxiously 
for His coming in Judea. They wondered every time a boy 
baby was born whether He had come, for the old prophets 
long before had told them that He was coming, and so they 
were waiting for Him. 

I don't suppose we know how much they needed Him ; but 
they knew. Times were hard; people were cruel. Men and 
women were made to fight with wild animals to amuse who- 
ever wanted to come to the show. Sick people were turned 
out to die; the insane were chained to posts. And it was 

4 8 



CHRISTMAS 49 

while things were in such condition that He came unto 
His own. 

"And His own people received Him not." To be sure, 
there was some joy when He was born. The angels sang, 
"Glory to God in the highest." The shepherds ran to tell the 
good news. The wise men showed their gladness by their 
gifts. His mother must have rejoiced greatly, for she knew 
that her boy was to be Jesus, the Saviour of the world. Yes, 
the first Christmas was a time of gladness. But it didn't 
last long. There had been no room for Him in the inn. The 
cruel king soon drove Him out of His country. As He grew 
up he was misunderstood. When they found Him in the 
temple His mother asked Him how He could treat His par- 
ents so disrespectfully. By and by, in His own village of 
Nazareth, His neighbors wanted to kill Him ; the people made 
Him leave Judea and then He had to flee from Galilee. His 
friends said, "He is crazy," and his enemies said, "He is in 
league with the Devil." He became a man without a coun- 
try. "The foxes have holes," He said, "and the birds of the 
air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his 
head." And last of all, His own people put Him to death. 
"He came unto his own and his own received him not." 

But I said there were two verses I had been thinking about. 
We have talked about one of them, now we must talk about 
the other. This second verse begins, "But as many as re- 
ceived him." So there were some who welcomed Him. 
Not a great many, to be sure, but some. After He had been 
here over thirty years, there were only about one hundred 
and twenty who called themselves His friends. 

At first the Apostles received him, His special friends; 
then there were a few good women and some men like Nico- 
demus and Joseph. Of course, the little children and sick 
people were always glad to see Him. They let Him in. 

And then the verse goes on, "But as many as received him, 
to them gave he the right to become children of God." 
Those who received Him and welcomed Him, those who 



50 MY THREE KEYS 

were glad He had come, the}' became His children — not 
strangers or visitors, but children, entitled because they were 
children to a place in their Father's home. 

And now we are rejoicing because He came. Christmas 
is a time of joy for us. But is that all that Christmas means 
to us? Will Christmas be over next week, next month? 
Are we not going to make it a time of real joy by letting 
Him come in, so that we may become children of God? He 
is saying this Christmas Sunday, "Behold, I stand at the 
door and knock, if any man . . . open the door, I will 
come in." 

We have been singing, 
"Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown 

When Thou earnest to earth for me; 

But in Bethlehem's home 

There was found no room 

For Thy holy nativity. 

O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, 

There is room in my heart for Thee." 
Do we mean it? 



XIV 
LISTENING TO GOD 

Once upon a time some lumbermen were cutting timber in 
the woods in British Columbia. Among the workmen were 
some Indians. One day the boss wanted a certain kind of 
ax which he knew was back in the camp where the supplies 
were kept. So he took a shingle and with a piece of charcoal 
wrote on it a message, asking for the ax. Then he called an 
Indian and told him to take that back to the camp and bring 
back what they gave him. The Indian couldn't read, so when 
he got to the camp and gave the man the shingle, and then 
saw the man read it and go and get the ax and give it to 
him, he was so frightened he ran away into the woods. He 
couldn't understand how a shingle with a few marks on it 
could ask for an ax. 

So it is we sometimes can't understand how people can 
talk to each other when they don't see one another. There 
were no telephones when I was a boy, and if anyone had told 
me that a man in New York had talked to his wife in Plainfield 
I'm afraid I would have wanted to run away as the Indian 
did. But now it doesn't surprise us or frighten us when people 
who can't see each other talk together. 

Once there was a mother named Hannah. She wanted a 
baby boy very much, so she spoke to God. She couldn't see 
God, but she was sure He would hear her if she spoke to 
Him. She told the Lord that if He would give her a baby 
boy she would lend him to the Lord. Sure enough, a boy 
was born in her home soon after that, and when he was a 
very little fellow she took him to the temple and told the 
priest, Eli, about what she had promised, and Eli took the 
little boy to help in the church work. There he grew up 
until he was quite a big boy. One night he was sleeping in 

51 



52 MY THREE KEYS 

his usual place in the temple when he thought he heard some 
one calling him. He thought of course it was Eli, the old 
priest, but Eli said, No, he hadn't called. Then he told 
Samuel, for that was the little boy's name, to lie down again 
and if he heard the voice again to say, "Speak, Lord, for 
thy servant heareth." So by and by Samuel heard the call 
again, and then he answered just as Eli had told him and 
said, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." And God spoke 
to him. He was as surprised, I imagine, as the Indian who 
found that the shingle could speak. 

And God speaks to us today just as truly as He spoke to 
Samuel that night in the temple. How does he speak ? Why, 
first of all, in the Bible. We can read there what He wants 
to say to us. He speaks to us, too, in springtime, when the 
trees begin to bud again and the grass grows green and the 
flowers come out, as if He were saying, "I've taken care of 
them through the cold winter and now I'm bringing them 
back to life again." 

He speaks to us by the gifts He is making to us all the 
time. One day I got a package from a friend and in it was 
a book. It was my birthday and I could hear my friend 
saying through the gift, though he wasn't anywhere near 
me, "I'm thinking of you and wishing you joy." So God 
gives us homes, and parents, and eyes and ears, and all the 
joy oi life, and some of its sorrow, and in His gifts we can 
hear Him speaking to us. Let us listen for His voice and 
say as Samuel did, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." 



XV 
PRAYER 

One day I was sitting on the stone steps at Silver Bay, 
folding birds and frogs and other things out of paper for 
the children, and very soon quite a crowd of men and women 
had gathered about us. It wasn't very long before two or 
three of the women said, "Won't you teach us to make them?" 
They had seen me making paper toys and that made them 
want to learn how to make them themselves. When you see 
anyone doing something interesting you are very likely to 
want to be shown how to do it yourself. 

It was that way with Jesus' disciples. He used to get up 
early in the morning to pray. One day some of His dis- 
ciples heard Him praying. They must have wondered why 
He, God's Son, needed to pray; but undoubtedly they knew 
that it helped Him to be the strong man that He was. So 
they came to Him and said, "Lord, teach us to pray." Seeing 
Him pray made them want to learn how to pray. He was 
always anxious to teach people, so He told them He had a 
prayer He wanted them to learn: "Our Father which art 
in heaven," and then he went on to teach them the rest of 
the Lord's Prayer. What He wanted them to learn was that 
they had a Father in heaven, that God in heaven was their 
Father ; for He knew that if they could understand that they 
had a heavenly Father it meant that they must talk to Him, 
for you couldn't think of anybody not talking to his father; 
and talking to our heavenly Father is praying. 

Just try to imagine living in a house with your father and 
never speaking to him ! It is hard even to think it. But 
when we don't pray it is a good deal like that. I knew two 
brothers who lived in the same house and never spoke to 
each other. They were always uncomfortable and unhappy. 

53 



54 MY THREE KEYS 

Prayer is talking to our heavenly Father. Now, we don't 
ask for something every time we speak to the father in our 
home; sometimes we tell him what we've been doing or we 
thank him for what he has done for us. There are a thou- 
sand things we talk with him about. So when we pray, it 
isn't always to ask for something, it's just to talk with our 
Father — to tell Him about ourselves, to thank Him for what 
He has done, to seek His approval. 

Many times, though, we do ask our fathers for things we 
think we want and I'm sure they like to have us ask. What 
would I think of my boy if he never asked me for anything? 
But I don't always give my boy what he asks for. I couldn't, 
I love him too much. 

I had one of the best of fathers and I asked him for a 
great many things. One time I asked him for a gun, and he 
said he couldn't give it to me because it would be dangerous. 
I didn't like that answer ; I thought I was big enough to have 
a gun. A little while after that a boy about my age had a 
gun. He had no father or mother. I don't know where he 
got it, but he had it. One day he asked me to go hunting 
with him and some other boys. We went into the woods and 
pretty soon we saw a rabbit run under a heap of brush. As 
quick as we could we ran up on top of the pile and began to 
jump up and down to make the rabbit run out, and while we 
,were jumping the gun went off and shot one of the boys. 
Fortunately it didn't kill him, but he was in bed for many 
months and suffered a great deal. Then I began to think that 
my father knew better than I did about guns, and that he was 
a good father when he refused to give me one when I 
asked for it. So it is with our heavenly Father: He is so 
much wiser than we are that we ought to be satisfied when 
He says, "No," as well as when He says, "Yes." 

We must remember, too, that our heavenly Father has a 
very large family and He must think of all the boys and 
girls. Suppose there was a family where there was a father 
and mother and four or five children, and one boy went to 



PRAYER 55 

his father and said, "Father, I want the library to use all 
by myself." You know what that father would say; he 
would say, "Why no, Charlie, I can't let you have it. George 
and Molly want to use it sometimes. I must think of them as 
well as you." So our heavenly Father has to answer our 
prayers sometimes. He must think of His other children. 

Many times our parents don't give us what we ask for, 
but they help us to get it. My father might have given me 
a lot of money so that I wouldn't have to work, but he knew 
it would be much better for me if I got my own money, so 
he gave me an education and then I was able to earn money. 
Our heavenly Father gives us health and strength and brains 
and tells us to use them to get for ourselves the things He 
might very easily give us in answer to our prayers. 

When those women asked me to teach them how to make 
paper toys I showed them the toys I had made and then 
taught them how to make them. It was hard work for some 
of them, for they couldn't remember the rules which had to 
be followed, and the toys didn't look like much unless they 
did follow the rules. So when Jesus taught His disciples to 
pray He showed them a prayer, "Our Father which art in 
heaven," and little by little He taught them the rules they 
should follow when they prayed. "If you want to have 
your prayers answered," He said, "you must forgive anyone 
who has injured you. You mustn't be hard-hearted when 
you go to your Father." That seems perfectly fair, doesn't 
it ? You wouldn't feel much like asking your father for some 
toy or game if all the time you were angry with your brother. 

Then He told them they must be in earnest when they 
prayed. He said: "You must be like the man who had a 
friend come to his house suddenly one night. The friend 
was hungry and they had to go to their next-door neighbor 
to borrow something for him. But the neighbor had gone 
to bed and didn't want to get up, although the man who 
wanted to borrow was his friend. But he did get up and give 
him what he wanted, because he saw that the man was so 



56 MY THREE KEYS 

much in earnest." Some people only pray at night when they 
are all tired out and they just mumble over some words with- 
out really thinking about them. I know a girl who said her 
prayers at night just before she was ready for bed, and then 
something attracted her attention so that she didn't get into 
bed as she intended to do. When she was through she knelt 
down and said the same prayer over again; she had forgot- 
ten that she had prayed a few minutes before. Do you think 
God would be interested in such a prayer? 
Let us ask Jesus to teach us to pray. 



XVI 
THE FIRST EASTER 

Did you ever try to think of the first Easter service, or rather 
of the first Easter Day, for there wasn't any service? Let 
us try on this Easter to see if we can imagine what the first 
Easter was like. 

In the first place, we want to know who were there. Of 
course the men who traveled with Jesus, His disciples, were 
there after a while-— not all of them, for one had gone away. 
The good women who, while He was traveling about in 
Galilee, did what they could to make Him comfortable — 
they were there. Among them was Joanna, the wife of a 
man who was an officer in the king's household; Salome, the 
mother of two of the disciples, James and John ; Mary, Jesus' 
mother, was one of them, and poor Mary Magdalene for 
whom Jesus had done so much. 

Jesus had been crucified on Friday. All His disciples had 
run away. Mary Magdalene and one of the other Marys saw 
him buried in Joseph's new tomb, just outside Jerusalem. 
They had seen how hurriedly and carelessly it had been done, 
and they had made up their minds that when their Sabbath, 
our Saturday, was over they would bury him more carefully. 
So they waited for Sunday to come. In the meantime they 
got some of the other women and prepared the spices and 
ointment which they used in those days when anyone was 
buried. 

I suppose Joanna, that woman of the palace, came because 
life had been sweetened for her after she met Jesus. In 
the palace all was heathenism and cruelty. If the king wanted 
to punish a slave by cutting off his head he could do it. But 
when she had learned to love Jesus and Jesus loved her, life 
had become different for Joanna. Mary and Salome had come 

57 



58 MY THREE KEYS 

because their boys had been intimate friends of Jesus and 
they were greatly interested in their sons' friend. And Mary, 
His mother, poor broken-hearted Mary, where else would 
she be ? All of these people were Jesus' friends ; He had been 
good to them, and even in death they wanted to be good 
to Him. 

They weren't expecting an Easter Sunday. Some of them 
had seen the big stone rolled in front of the tomb in which 
the soldiers had placed Jesus' body and they were going to 
find that dead body and embalm it. They didn't expect to 
find an open grave, for they asked each other as they went 
along the road, "Who will roll away the stone for us, so 
that we can get at His body?" And even when Mary saw 
the empty tomb, she never thought it meant that Jesus had 
come up out of the grave, but she began to cry, because, 
as she thought, somebody had stolen the precious body. What 
they all expected to find was a dead man. And His disciples 
hadn't any doubt about it whatever; they didn't even go to 
see the grave — what good could that do? 

And what did they find, these good women ? Not the body 
of Jesus, but an empty grave and an angel who asked them 
why they were looking for the living Christ among the dead 
people. And then they saw Jesus Himself, somewhat differ- 
ent, but the same old friend they had known all along. Off 
they went to tell the disciples and some of them rushed up to 
the tomb, and sure enough, it was true — the Lord had risen 
indeed ! The first Easter Sunday was there. How few knew 
or cared anything about it ! Just a few women and a handful 
of men. 

And now another Easter Sunday has come round, as 
they have been coming round for hundreds and hundreds of 
years. Who keeps it now? Not a few men and women, 
but millions of men and women, boys and girls. We are 
among the number as we celebrate our Easter Sunday today. 

What is it that brings us? For many Jesus has sweetened 
life as He sweetened the life of Joanna; some are here be- 



THE FIRST EASTER 59 

cause their children are with Him as were the children of 
Mary and Salome. For all of us Jesus has done great things 
and we are here to show our joy that He rose from the dead. 

And what do we expect to find? Flowers? Yes, none are 
too beautiful for Him. Fine music? Of course, it is a day 
to rejoice and we sing when we are glad. An impressive 
service? None is too grand and stately for Him. But if we 
only expect to find on our Easter Sunday flowers and music 
and beauty we shall make the mistake those good women 
made on the first Easter Sunday. We shall be looking for 
the wrong thing, as they looked for the wrong thing. We 
must expect to find, as we shall find, a living Christ. He 
said, "Because I live ye shall live also." May He speak to 
us today as He spoke to Mary long, long ago. 

In our Christian religion two days are greatest, I think, 
Christmas and Easter: the day Christ was born; the day 
He rose from the dead. Our religion centers in a person, just 
as all great religions do. Buddhism, Confucianism, Moham- 
medanism — each had its great person. But they have died; 
nobody ever pretends that Buddha, Confucius, or Moham- 
med is alive. Our religion has a person, but one who is 
not dead — one who is alive still. Our Easter tells us of His 
life: we worship a living Christ. 

"Awake, awake, O sleeping heart, 

Cast off your load of sin, 
Unbolt the gates, unbar the doors, 

And let the Christ come in. 
His love like sunshine stream abroad, 

To cheer and bless our way, 
That we may sing with birds and flowers, 

This happy Easter Day. 
'Tis Easter time, 'tis Easter time, 

And Christ is risen today !" 



XVII 
CHILDREN'S DAY 

Whenever anybody says "children," we think of fathers 
and mothers, for we always find them where there are chil- 
dren. And what could be better than to think about our 
fathers and mothers on Children's Day ? How they love us ! 
Once out on the western plains, after a great snowstorm, some 
shepherds who were out looking for lost sheep stumbled over 
what looked like a bundle in the snow. But when they 
brushed the snow away they found it was a woman frozen 
to death. Nearly all her clothes had been taken off and 
wrapped into a bundle beside her, and this bundle the shep- 
herds found was her baby, still alive and warm. She had 
given her life for her child. 

I wish we knew more about Jesus when He was a boy 
living in Nazareth with His father and mother. I feel 
pretty sure that He learned how to tell those wonderful 
stories of His by telling stories to His little brothers and 
sisters. I'm sure He helped His father in the carpenter shop. 
There is one verse in the Bible that tells us a good deal 
about Him as a boy, though we don't usually notice it. When 
Jesus was thirty years old He was baptized, and His heavenly 
Father, looking down on Him, said, "This is my beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased." If a boy goes through 
life, v/orking in the carpenter shop, playing with his brothers 
and sisters and then when he is ready to leave home and 
begin for himself, his father can say, as Jesus' Father said, 
"He has been a good boy, I'm pleased with what he has done," 
we may be pretty sure that that boy has indeed been a 
good boy. 

You remember how He got left behind in Jerusalem when 
he was only twelve years old and when His mother found 

60 



CHILDREN'S DAY 61 

Him in the Temple and told Him they had been looking every- 
where for Him, He was surprised and said, "Why, Mother, 
I don't see how you could have thought of looking anywhere 
else for me." Where would your mother look for you if you 
were lost? 

On this Children's Day as we are thinking of our fathers 
and mothers let's resolve to love them as we have never loved 
them before; let us show our love by doing something for 
them. This is what we so often forget. 

A Sunday school teacher told me that he once said to the 
boys in his class, "Now, boys, how would it be if, before 
you went to school, you should say, 'Mother, isn't there some- 
thing I can do for you?' How would she like it?" And one 
boy answered, "I think she'd send for the doctor." You see, 
he realized that he never had done such a thing, and it would 
be a shock to his mother. Mothers like surprises like this. 

But Children's Day is a day when mothers and fathers 
should think of their children, for sometimes a boy or a 
girl is not all that he or she ought to be because, maybe, 
Father hasn't been what he ought to be, or Mother has been 
too busy with other things. 

A man was sentenced to prison and he wrote a letter to 
the judge who sentenced him, in which he said, "I sat pon- 
dering last night on the end of my evil ways and came to 
the conclusion that I had myself to blame. It might have 
been different had I had a mother's love to guide me." 

An old hermit was telling some boys how he happened to 
be living in the mountains by himself. He had followed the 
wrong trail, he said, when he was back in the city and he 
had come out into the woods to see if he could not find the 
better trail, and he closed by saying, "I have often thought 
if I had just had a father to help me find the other one I 
might have been different." 

Fathers and mothers, on this Children's Day let us resolve 
to live so that we can say to our children, "Follow me." 



XVIII 
RALLY DAY 

There comes a time in the life of an army when an in- 
spection is held. The men stand up and are counted, and 
their equipment is examined. The officers look them over 
to see if they are ready for battle. Then sometimes they 
have a dress parade. They are in their best uniforms, every 
man is in the ranks, and they march along so that people can 
see how fine they look and that they are ready. 

Rally Day in Sunday school is something like inspection 
and dress parade in the army. We come together to be 
counted; to let each other see how many of us there are; 
to have our equipment inspected; to see if we are ready for 
the Sunday school work of the year ahead of us. 

But dress parade isn't the important event for an army. 
That's only to show what they have to fight with; it's the 
battle, the fight, that is the important thing. It's good to 
have a dress parade — it helps the soldier to be proud of his 
regiment; it makes him more courageous when he sees how 
many men there are, and how many will be with him in the 
fight. So Rally Day is good for Sunday schools, but it is 
not the most important part of the Sunday school life. 

It is said that before each great battle Napoleon would 
stand by his tent and one by one his generals would pass by 
and grasp his hand. Nothing was said, but they understood: 
the commander could count on them. I think our Rally Day 
could be something like that. It could be a time when we 
grasp the hand of our great Commander, the Captain of our 
salvation, and let Him know that He can depend on each one 
of us. Then it surely will be worth while to have it. 

But, as I have said, it is not the rally, useful as that is, 
that counts, but the things we do after the rally. One time 

62 



RALLY DAY 63 

they called for a rally of the Boy Scouts of England. Thou- 
sands of these splendid little fellows came together on a 
great Rally Day and the King walked about and inspected 
them. He was greatly impressed by the fine appearance of 
so many boys, but what attracted his attention especially was 
a peculiar badge which he saw on a few boys here and there. 
When he asked what it was he was told that each boy who 
wore that badge had saved a life. Those were the boys he 
admired the most — they were not merely at the rally, they 
had done something. 

During our Civil War one of our generals had gathered 
a great army. He drilled the men and equipped them, and 
had splendid dress parades, but he didn't fight the enemy with 
them. They were a fine lot of men ; when they were on dress 
parade, they were a splendid sight, but they weren't fighting. 
And President Lincoln back in Washington was angry with 
that general, for he knew that the thing an army was in- 
tended for was fighting. 

The good St. Francis was asked by one of his brother 
monks if he would go into the village with him and preach. 
St. Francis consented and together they walked to the village. 
They went along one street and down another until they had 
walked over a good part of the town and were nearly home 
again. Finally the brother said, "St. Francis, when are we 
going to preach?" And St. Francis said, "We have already 
preached." It is what we are that really counts — not getting 
together on this Rally Day and singing our songs and con- 
gratulating each other, but what we are and will be in the 
weeks and months ahead of us. Mere going to Sunday school 
avails but little; we must live as those should live who go to 
Sunday school. That is what counts. 

The real Rally Day is to come. I don't know v/hen, but 
some day, surely. Jesus told about it when He said that all 
the people in this world would come together for that grand 
Rally Day. And there would be a parade and an inspection 
and a Judge ; and He would divide the people into two crowds 



64 MY THREE KEYS 

— those who had done something for Him and those who had 
done nothing. That will be a Rally Day that counts. And 
some people, He said, will be surprised. They will say, 
"Lord, when did we do anything for you?" And the Lord 
will say, "When you fed those hungry people in Belgium, 
when you clothed those Armenians, when you helped those 
men in the prison camps of Europe in the Great War, then 
you were doing something for me." This Rally Day is to 
get us ready for that other Rally Day. 

Miss Richards in her beautiful book, "The Golden Win- 
dows," tells of the children who were set to reap in a wheat 
field. When evening came the Angel of the wheat field called 
the children to the gate to bring their sheaves. One child 
had none and the Angel had to say to him, "None enters here 
without sheaves." But one of the other children cried out, 
"Dear Angel, let him in. In the morning I was sick and he 
played with me and I forgot my pain, and he gave me one 
of his sheaves." And another said, "Dear Angel, let him in. 
The hot sun made me faint and he brought me water. He 
gave me one of his sheaves, too." And still another called 
to the Angel, "I was tired out and the day was nearly over 
and I hadn't very many sheaves, when he came along and 
gave me his sheaves and comforted me." And all the chil- 
dren cried out, "He gave us his sheaves, too; let him in." 
The Angel reached inside the gate and brought out a pile of 
sheaves. "Here are your sheaves," said the Angel. "They are 
known and counted every one." And he said to the child, 
"Lead the way in." 



XIX 
WHEN JESUS GAME 

One morning our newspaper told us the story of a man 
who was exhibiting some trained lions in a theater in New 
York. There were four or five of them and somehow or 
other they got out of their cage and began to walk round 
where the people were. Of course there was a great rush 
to get away from them, and the people were nearly wild with 
fear. Very soon a man came out on the stage and talked 
to the people in such a way about the lions that they quieted 
down and everybody got out safely. 

Doesn't it seem as if the Great War were a time like that 
when the lions got loose? People were killing each other 
and the whole world was in confusion. It seemed as if wild 
beasts had been let loose. How much we need some one who 
can be to the world what that man was who quieted the 
frightened crowd. 

Just before Jesus was born it was also a time like that. 
The poor people were tormented and ill-treated by the Ro- 
mans who were almost like wild animals. One way in which 
the Romans amused themselves was to let hungry beasts 
loose in a theater and then make people fight with them. 
There was great need for some one who could bring peace 
and quietness into this world. 

And they had a promise in their Bible that such a man 
would come. He was to be called "Wonderful, Counsellor, 
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." And 
they were waiting anxiously for His coming. God was com- 
ing to His earth; He had spoken by His prophets, He was 
to speak now by His Son. 

At last the time came when the first stirrings of the great 
event began to be felt. Up in the temple in Jerusalem one 

" 6 5 



66 MY THREE KEYS 

day the priest Zacharias was told that he should have a baby- 
boy in his home who would grow up and prepare the way for 
the coming of this Prince of Peace. 

A simple Jewish girl in Nazareth was told by an angel 
that she ought to be a very happy woman, for her baby was 
to be the long-looked-for Saviour of the world. And then 
Joseph, Mary's husband, was told about it, too. 

Over in the East a wonderful new star had appeared that 
started some strange-looking men on a search for this 
Saviour, for they understood that the star would lead to Him. 

Joseph and Mary went up to Bethlehem, their old family 
home, and there, while the shepherds were out in the field 
watching their sheep by night, and while a host of angels 
appeared in the sky and sang "Glory to God in the highest, 
peace on earth, good will to men," the little child was born 
who was to be the Saviour of the world. The Prince of 
Peace had come ! 

But that was long, long ago. Will He come to our troubled 
times; will He come now when the world needs Him so 
much? Yes, He surely will, for He has said, "Behold, I 
stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and 
open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, 
and he with me." He will come if we will let Him. 

And often Pie comes when we don't realize that He has 
come. Tolstoi tells a beautiful story of how He came to 
an old shoemaker named Martin, who didn't realize that He 
had come. The old man had been reading in his Bible about 
the poor woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears and 
wiped them with her hair, and when Simon found fault with 
her Jesus said, "My head with oil thou didst not anoint: 
but this woman has anointed my feet with ointment. Where- 
fore I say unto thee, Her sins which are many, are forgiven ; 
for she loved much." 

He also read, "Then the King shall say . . . Come, ye 
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry, and ye 



WHEN JESUS CAME 67 

gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was 
a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me; 
I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came 
unto me." 

And he wondered what it meant. That night when he fell 
asleep he thought he heard a voice saying, "Martin, Martin, 
look for me in the street tomorrow; I'm coming to your 
home.'*' 

And so all day Martin kept looking for Him. One time 
he called a poor old woman in and gave her and her baby 
something warm to wear. A little later he called in another 
poor woman who looked sick and gave her some warm tea; 
and then he saw the poor old man who used to shovel the 
snow, looking so cold and forlorn, and he brought him in to 
have some tea. 

The time came when Martin was to close his shop and he 
sat down to read again the Bible stories that had interested 
him so much. And as he nodded, falling half asleep, and 
wondering why Christ for whom he had been watching 
hadn't come, he seemed to hear a voice, "Martin, I have 
come." He looked over where the voice came from and the 
first old woman seemed to step out and fade away. Again 
he heard, or thought he heard, "Martin, I have come," and 
there from the corner the other old woman seemed to step 
forward and then vanish; and a third time he thought the 
voice said, "Martin, I have come," and the old snow shoveler 
seemed to step out and then to disappear. Then he remem- 
bered what he had read: "I was hungry and ye gave me 
to eat ... I was naked and ye clothed me; I was sick and 
ye visited me." "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these 
my brethren, even these least, ye have done it unto me." 

Then Martin knew that Christ had come, for where love 
is, there God is. 



XX 
A BIRTHDAY TALK 

This is my birthday. I've had a great many of them and 
I'm very thankful, but at the same time I wish I were back 
where a lot of them had not yet come. Suppose you count 
with me to see just how many I've had and when we get to 
the right number we'll stop. One, two, three, that's right, 
four, five, six, and so on to fifty-nine. Isn't that a lot? 

In our Sunday school we've had a lot of birthdays, too. 
Whenever our boys and girls have birthdays they put into 
the birthda3 !r bank as many pennies as they are years old, and 
I write each one a birthday letter. Once a little girl put in 
her seven pennies and then put in two more. "Why, 
Eleanor," I said, "what are those for?" "Those are for my 
dog, Beauty, she's just two years old." So I had to write a 
birthday letter to Beauty. One other Sunday a boy put in 
his six pennies and then put in an extra one. I asked him 
about that one and he said that was for his rooster, who was 
just a year old, so a letter had to go to the rooster. One day 
a little girl added a penny to the six for herself and told me 
it was for her doll. I wrote a birthday letter to the doll. 
These were curious birthdays, weren't they? 

But ever so many years ago there was the greatest of all 
birthdays. I want to tell you about it. It was so great that 
every newspaper printed today tells on its very first page 
how many years and months and days it is since that birth- 
day. Everybody who writes a letter today begins by saying 
how long it is since that birthday. And here we are now 
talking about it. What a wonderful birthday that must have 
been. 

The people were expecting a king to be born. They had 
a king who wasn't good to them; he took their property and 

68 



A BIRTHDAY TALK 69 

treated them badly, so they were anxious for the coming of 
the new king. They had a book which told them what a 
wonderful man the new king would be, and they were eager 
for his birthday. Every time a boy baby was born in any 
of their homes they would ask each other, "Can this be the 
new king?" 

Away off in a distant country some wise men had heard 
about this birthday that was to be, and they understood that 
when the time came a beautiful star would show them the 
way to the place where the new king was born. And one day 
they discovered the star and started out to see the new king. 

Over in the fields near Bethlehem shepherds kept watch 
over their sheep at night, for fear of wild animals. I sup- 
pose they often talked together about the birthday they were 
expecting. Well, one night while they were out in the field 
with their sheep a bright light suddenly came into the sky 
which frightened them; but very soon an angel stood near 
by and said, "Don't be afraid. The birthday you've been 
looking for has come. Over in Bethlehem you'll find the 
new King." 

A few days before this two people had started from their 
home to go to Bethlehem, because the king wanted to count 
the people in his kingdom. They went to the hotel, but 
there wasn't room for them there, so they had to sleep in 
the barn that night, the same night that the shepherds saw 
the angel. There the little King was born. They had no 
cradle, so they laid Him in the clean straw of the manger, 
where the cows were fed. 

The shepherds didn't wait long after the angel spoke to 
them, but rushed back to the village to see what had hap- 
pened and there they found that it was true — the birthday 
had come ! By and by the wise men who were following the 
star came, too, and found the wonderful baby and gave Him 
the birthday presents they had brought. 

I wonder if you can tell me who it was that was born that 
day? Yes, it was Jesus. 



jo MY THREE KEYS 

There's a beautiful story, not in the Bible, which tells 
us that the hotel keeper in Bethlehem had a little daughter. 
She had been made lame by the kick of one of the mules in 
the courtyard. When they told her that there was a bab^f 
in the barn she was delighted and ran out as soon as she 
was dressed to see Him. The minute she saw Him she 
wanted to do something for Him. But she had very little. 
Her dearest possession was a little pet lamb, and she looked 
up into her mother's face and said, "Oh, Mother, couldn't I 
give Him my lamb?" "Why, yes," her mother said, "if you 
would like to." And so she gathered the precious lamb into 
her arms and laid him in the manger by the baby. Then 
she turned to the baby's mother and said, "Couldn't I hold 
Him in my arms just a minute?" He was a very wee baby, 
but Mary, his mother, saw how anxious the little lame girl 
was and so she picked the baby up and put Him in the little 
girl's arms for a moment. And then, the story says, a won- 
derful thing happened. After that the little girl wasn't lame 
any more. She could run about just like other children and 
was so happy. Her mother and father didn't know how it 
had happened, but the little girl knew it was because Jesus 
had touched her. 

And that's why it is such a wonderful birthday — wherever 
Jesus goes He makes people better and stronger and happier. 
Because He isn't here on the earth today, some people 
think we can no longer get close to Him. But we can. He 
said we could in the Bible. He still lives and we can talk 
to Him, and through the Bible and through our hearts He 
talks to us. He wants us to be His friends, His children. 
One of His great friends, the man he loved best when He 
was here on the earth, wrote, "As many as received him 
[Jesus], to them gave he the right to become children of God." 

So let us not be content with knowing about His birthday, 
but let us try to know Him and to let Him come into our 
lives by doing the things that please Him, then He will be 
our King, too. 



XXI 
SHOWING OUR LOVE BY DOING 

The last night of Jesus' earthly life had come. He and 
His disciples had spent Wednesday night with His friends, 
Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, in their home in Bethany, a 
little village near by, and were now in Jerusalem. Thurs- 
day morning they had walked into the city. In those days 
people wore sandals instead of shoes. These were some- 
thing like shoes, only they had no top to them, just a sole 
bound to the foot by strings. You can see how hot and dusty 
their feet would get. It was the custom, when a visitor came, 
to have a servant ready with water to wash the tired, hot 
feet, after the sandals had been laid off, just as we ask a 
visitor when he comes to our homes if he would like to 
wash his face and hands. And, too, we must remember 
that when people gathered about the table for a meal they 
didn't sit on chairs, but lay on couches with their heads near 
the table and their feet on the other end of the couch. Jesus 
and His twelve friends had come to a supper and if you had 
been in the room you would have seen the men lying there 
before the table with their bare feet on the outside end of 
the couches. 

On the way to the supper there had been a sort of quarrel 
among the disciples. They had been talking about which one 
of them was the greatest. I suppose Peter said, "Well, Jesus 
often takes me with Him and He doesn't take the rest of 
you." And Judas might have said, "He couldn't get along 
very well without me ; I'm the treasurer, and keep the money." 
So no doubt the talk went on. I imagine they got rather 
angry at one another. 

Jesus knew about this quarreling and it made Him very 

71 



J2. MY THREE KEYS 

sad. He had been with these men for three years and He 
must have thought that they had learned something in that 
time. So He made up His mind that He would teach them a 
lesson in loving each other. After they had all lain down 
at the supper table, He got up and took a basin of water and 
a towel and actually did for them what a servant usually did 
for visitors: He washed their feet. I don't wonder Peter 
said, "Lord, I can't let you wash my feet; that is not for 
you to do ; that is the servant's work." But Jesus went round 
and washed them one by one. How ashamed they must have 
felt as they remembered their quarrel about who was the 
greatest, when they saw Him, who was easily the greatest, 
doing the work of a servant ! 

Then He said to them, "Do you know what I've done? 
I've set you an example. Don't fight to be great, but be like 
me, a servant to all." A little later He said to them, "This , 
is what I want: I want you to love each other." He knew 
that if they loved each other there wouldn't be any quarreling 
about who was greatest. And then, too, He wanted them to 
help people, just as He had gone up and down the country 
helping people because He loved them. 

We gladly do anything for people if we love them. Once 
a little girl was carrying a very heavy baby and a kind man 
came along who felt sorry for her because she had so much 
to carry. He asked her, "Doesn't it make you tired to carry 
such a big baby? Isn't he heavy?" She looked up a bit 
surprised and said, "Why, he isn't heavy, he's my brother." 
Her love for her little brother made her burden light. 

Some boys were playing on a dock in New York and one 
of them fell into the river. Quick as a flash one of the other 
boys, only about twelve years old, jumped in after him. Then 
some policemen came along and pulled both the boys out of 
the water. One policeman said to the older boy, "Sonny, 
that was a nervy thing you did, jumping into the river after 
that little boy. Weren't you afraid you'd be drowned?" 
"No," said the boy, "I wasn't afraid. Why, you know he's 



SHOWING OUR LOVE BY DOING 73 

my brother !" That made him brave ; he loved his little 
brother and he couldn't see him drown. 

Yes, we can do things for people we love. In one of our 
army camps one day a man discovered the Y. M. C. A. Sec- 
retary blacking a soldier's boots. He was somewhat sur- 
prised and when he asked the secretary why he did it, he said, 
"I love these men, and I want them to know it. My Lord 
took the place of a servant and washed His disciples' feet. 
He said He wanted us to be like Him, so I black the sol- 
diers' boots and I cut their hair — anything to show them 
how I love them." 



XXII 
SECRET SIN 

Joshua has led his army successfully and much booty has 
been captured. In gratitude to God they have given every- 
thing to Him as a thank-offering. And now it is time to go to 
battle again. This time the Israelites do not anticipate much 
trouble, for the city they are about to attack, Ai, is a little 
one, with few soldiers, and they are sure it can be captured 
easily. But they soon find out that they have made a mistake, 
for though the men of Ai are few in number, Israel's armies 
cower before them and retreat in a great disaster. Joshua, 
the general, is dumfounded and cannot understand how his 
victorious soldiers can be overcome by such a weak force 
as came out of Ai. In despair he falls on his face before 
God and cries out, "O Lord, what shall I say when the 
people of Israel run away from their enemies?" And God 
answered him, "Get up; why do you cry to me? You've 
been defeated because Israel has sinned. They have taken 
some of the things offered to me. I can't help you until you 
get rid of this sin." It was the old, old story — sorrow 
brought by sin. It destroyed Eden, it brought the flood, it 
burned Sodom and Gomorrah, and it is doing the same now. 

Then came an investigation and it was discovered that one 
of the soldiers, Achan by name, had seen some beautiful 
things among the loot and, thinking nobody would ever know 
about it, took some of them and hid them in his tent. No 
one but God had seen him stealing, but God saw and that 
made all the difference in the world. 

Just think how all the people had to suffer because Achan 
sinned. Many a good soldier, no doubt, lost his life because 
of Achan's crime. It seems hard, but it is always the way. 
I get a splinter in my finger and soon my whole hand is un- 

74 



SECRET SIN 75 

comfortable. Or a grain of sand gets into my eye and my 
whole body suffers. Two or three men get together and 
commit a crime and the name of the city in which they live 
becomes a by-word throughout the country. A troop of 
Boy Scouts were in a competition. Something went wrong 
and one boy broke out with an oath. This threw the whole 
troop out of the competition. 

Yes, no man liveth unto himself; we are bound to influ- 
ence others. A man was trying to read in an English railway 
carriage. The light seemed very dim and he began to find 
fault with it. When he looked at it a little closer he saw 
that the light was all right, but the reflector was tarnished 
and poor. We are the reflectors, not the light, and people 
blame the light when they should blame the reflector. 

And notice again, nobody knew about Achan's sin, but they 
suffered just the same. Joshua didn't know about it, all that 
he saw was its results. The secret sin brought suffering to 
his neighbors. God said to Joshua, "You are suffering be- 
cause there is an accursed thing in the camp." That was the 
way He looked at Achan's sin. And what a lot of secret sins 
there are ! Sins that nobody knows anything about — pride, 
envy, jealousy, impurity, and those insidious sins of the im- 
agination, sins of the thoughts, about which Jesus spoke 
one day. 

And so it comes to this — my sin, unknown to anybody, may 
prevent God from blessing my home, or my school, or my 
church, or my group of friends. It is bad enough to suffer 
myself for my sins, but how awful it is to think that others 
must suffer, too. 

As soon as Joshua realized what the trouble was he began 
to look for it : if there was sin in the camp he was determined 
to find it out. He examined his men one by one until he 
came to Achan, and then the sin was cast out with dreadful 
punishment. After that they attacked Ai again and were 
victorious. 

If any sin of mine is interfering with God's blessing, ma}^ 



76 MY THREE KEYS 

it be cast out now. May no one ever be denied a blessing be- 
cause of me. 

And the way to cast out the sin is to repent — which means 
to turn away from it, give, it up; confess — tell God about it 
and tell the one who has been wronged ; and pray for forgive- 
ness; then the blessing will come. 

I once heard a railroad conductor lead a great men's meet- 
ing in prayer. He came out on the platform and knelt down 
and said, "O Lord, there are lots of little fellows in our homes, 
and if you were to ask them who is the greatest man on 
earth, every last one would say 'Papa.' Grant, Lord, that 
none of these little fellows shall be disappointed today." Is 
there any sin in your heart, known only to God, that is pre- 
venting a blessing coming to those who are dear to you? 



XXIII 
BY THE WAY 

As we read the familiar story of the Good Samaritan we 
do not always realize that this good man was an ordinary 
business man on a business trip. It is said that he did this 
good turn "as he journeyed." That is, he wasn't out looking 
for some kind deed that he could do, but he just accidentally 
came upon it and did it. And of all the things he had done 
in his lifetime this is the one of all others for which he is 
remembered. He may have made a lot of money — I rather 
think such a man would — or he may have built up a big busi- 
ness, but we do not remember him for any of these things — 
we remember him because he was ready to help when the 
chance came to him. 

In this he was very much like Jesus, who did many of His 
kindest deeds "as he journeyed." Jesus had no home. He 
was continually moving about, and sometimes His journeys 
were journeys of flight. Once on His way to a banquet He 
stopped to cure a man of the dropsy; on the way to Nain 
He met a widow who was going to bury her son, and He 
stopped to restore him to life; He had promised to go to 
the home of a prominent man to see his sick son, and was on 
the way when a poor woman claimed His attention; once 
when He was taking a short vacation it was broken into by 
a great crowd that needed and that received His help. He has 
been called the man who was willing to be interrupted. 

And so some of the best things we shall do will be done 
as we journey — that is, while we are doing one thing the 
opportunity to do others will meet us. 

We mustn't think that the only time we can be helpful is 
when we start out on purpose to do some kind deed. It is 
good, of course, to have special times when we try to make 

77 



78 MY THREE KEYS 

some one happy, but we ought to do a great many "good 
turns" as we journey, as we go along doing other things. 

I don't suppose the good Samaritan ever thought that you 
and I would be talking about that kind deed he did so many 
hundreds of years ago; probably he never thought about it 
himself. He was in the habit of helping people whenever 
he got a chance and this occurrence on the Jericho road was 
just one of many good deeds. He was like those people Jesus 
told about, who were surprised when He told them that they 
had been kind to Him. They didn't remember any such times, 
but He said, "Why, it was when you helped those poor people, 
when you fed them and took care of them, when they were 
sick." They had forgotten all about it; probably they did it 
"as they journeyed." 



XXIV 
A GARDEN TALK 

I think it is interesting to remember that the world 
began in a garden. When a loving heavenly Father wanted 
to provide a home for the first of His earthly children, He 
made a beautiful garden and put them in it. He thought that 
a garden would be the best place in all the world for them 
to live in. A long time after that, when He sent His Son 
to live in our world, He directed Him to a home in the coun- 
try where He could see the grass and the trees and the 
flowers and all the growing things. Jesus was always talk- 
ing about what He had seen in the country. He knew about 
the mustard seed, how small it was; He saw how the corn 
grew, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the 
ear; He knew how the weeds killed the vegetables, and He 
saw how beautiful the lilies were. 

One day He told a lot of people a story about a garden. 
He said a man took some seed and scattered it over his gar- 
den. It was the same seed everywhere, but some fell on the 
hard path where people walked across the field, and of course 
it couldn't grow; in fact, the birds saw it lying there and 
carried it away. Some of it fell where the soil was very 
thin and there was rock underneath. It did the best it could, 
but its roots couldn't go very deep. The sun soon dried it 
up. Over in one corner were a lot of thorny bushes; some 
seed got among them, but the bushes used all the nourishment 
in the soil and the seeds didn't get a chance to grow. But 
there was a part of the seed that got into the right kind of 
soil — it grew. 

Then Jesus said, people are like these different parts of 
that man's garden. Some are like the hard, beaten path. 
What the Bible says, is the seed; they hear it but don't do 

79 



8o MY THREE KEYS 

anything after they hear; they soon forget. Some are like 
the thin soil. They hear; they start to do something, but 
they soon give up. They get tired, we say. Other children 
are like that part of the garden where the thorny bushes 
thrive. They hear, they start to do something, but they find 
so many other things to do that they, too, give up. Then 
there are a few like the ground that was good. They hear, 
they start, they keep on, they finish. May we every one of 
us be like the good ground in which the seed grew. 

And as the seeds begin to grow and the leaves are put 
forth, and by and by the flowers blossom out, can we help 
wondering who does it all? Here are some seeds. I put a 
few in here, just a little farther along I plant some others, 
and at this end some different ones. They all grow in the 
same ground. When the flowers come, some are white ; next 
there are blue ones, and here will be red ones. How did it 
happen? Who painted them? Not I. No gardener could 
do it. It couldn't "just happen." Surely it must have been 
God. No one else could do it. 

And then isn't it wonderful how such beautiful flowers 
sometimes come out of such dirty places ! Here is a calla 
lily. How white and wonderful it is ! But it wasn't so 
bright and clean and pretty when it began. It was just a 
brown, dirty lump. Then it pushed a stalk up through the 
earth that isn't at all beautiful. It seems to have on an 
overcoat. But the sunshine gets at it, and the more the sun 
shines the more the overcoat is unbuttoned; and the more it 
is unbuttoned, the more beautiful the lily becomes. It seems 
at first as if the plant were just thinking of itself and saying, 
"What a cold world this is; I must just take care of myself." 
But it realizes before long that the sunshine will keep it 
warm, so it lets itself go; it opens its heart, and when it is 
turned completely inside out see how beautiful it is ! We 
grow beautiful when we get out of ourselves. 

Once there was a poor woman who lived in a miserable 
room with just one window. She was not only poor, but she 



A GARDEN TALK 81 

thought there was no use in doing anything — no use trying 
to keep her place clean, nobody cared for her. So she let 
the window get dirty and the cobwebs gather on the walls 
and the corners collect all kinds of dust. But one Easter 
Sunday the children in Sunday school took flowers to the 
poor people in this neighborhood. It so happened that one 
of the plants, an Easter lily, was brought to this old woman's 
home. She was greatly surprised to find that some one did 
care for her. So she thanked the children as they put the 
plant on the table. Now the window had been unwashed so 
long that very little light came through the dirt, and she 
could scarcely see her gift. So she said to herself, "I must 
clean my window and let in more light. I want to see my 
flower." She cleaned it, and the sunshine came flooding in 
and she wondered at the beautiful lily. But when the light 
came in, it showed her the cobwebs and the dust, too. 
"Why," she said, "I didn't know this room was so dirty; 
I must clean it up." So with broom and duster she set to 
work and soon it was a very different looking place. In 
fact, it got to be so clean that she felt that she must take 
better care of her clothes, so that they would be more like 
the window and the rest of the room. But best of all it 
made her think of the anger and jealousy and spite and envy 
in her own heart and she said, "Now that my room is clean 
my heart must be clean, too." All of this the Easter lily did. 
Don't you think flowers are wonderful ? Isn't a garden won- 
derful, too ! 



XXV 
THE LORD'S SUPPER 

Long, long ago the people used to worship God by killing 
a lamb and burning it on an altar. They felt that as the 
blood flowed out the life of the animal was being given to 
God, and that thus they showed God their love for Him. 
For life they knew was the most precious thing in the world, 
and in offering the life of the lamb they were offering to God 
the very best thing they had. 

Now it happened in those early days that God's people had 
been for a long, long time in Egypt where the king had 
treated them very badly. Finally God said He would take 
them out of Egypt, but He wanted the king to send them 
out. The king, however, didn't want to let them go, so God 
had to punish him. He would promise to let the people go 
and then, when they got all ready to start, he always changed 
his mind, and wouldn't let them go. Then God had to send 
an awful punishment to him. He told His own people one 
day that the angel of death would go through Egypt on a 
certain night and that he would kill the oldest child in every 
home except in the houses where he saw the blood of a lamb 
sprinkled on the door. I suppose there were some people 
who thought, "Well, what difference can it make whether 
there is blood on our door or not?" I'm quite sure the 
Egyptians felt that way. But, anyhow, the Hebrews who 
believed in God, and who were accustomed to worship Him 
by killing a lamb, did what God told them to do and sprinkled 
the blood on the door before they went to bed that night. 

And it came true as God said it would. The angel came 
in the hush of night and the next morning in all the houses 
where there was no blood on the door there was great sor- 
row, for the oldest child had died. But in all the houses 

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THE LORD'S SUPPER 83 

where there was blood on the door there was great rejoic- 
ing, for the angel of death had passed over. So they called 
that time the Passover, and every year even now they keep 
that day, just as we in America keep the Fourth of July. 
The people were saved by the blood of the lamb. 

When Jesus was a boy they observed this feast of the 
Passover as they called it. As they kept it at Jerusalem, 
all the good Jews went up to that city to join in the celebra- 
tion. We read of Jesus going to that celebration when He 
was twelve years old, and He doubtless Went up many more 
times. He liked to remember how His people had been saved 
long, long ago by the blood of the lamb that was killed. 

And now the last night of His life had come. He and His 
disciples had come up to Jerusalem once more to keep the 
feast of the Passover. They were all together in a room in 
one of the houses, sitting, or rather lying, at the table. One 
of the things they did as they kept this feast was to kill a 
lamb and eat it, to help them remember that the blood of a 
lamb saved their people in those days long ago. While they 
were at the table, Jesus told them that He was going to be 
their lamb. He didn't use those exact words, but He tried 
to help them understand that it wouldn't be necessary any 
longer to kill a lamb and eat it. He was going to give His 
life once for all to save the people who believed in Him, 
just as the people had been saved who believed in God when 
He told them they would be safe if they put the blood of a 
lamb on the door of their houses. 

He explained it by taking a piece of bread and breaking it. 
He gave the pieces to His disciples and said, "This broken 
bread will represent my body to be broken on the cross for 
you." And then He took the wine and gave it to them and 
said, "This wine will represent my blood which I am going 
to shed on the cross for you. I want you to do this in remem- 
brance of me. Eat bread and drink wine to show that you 
remember that I gave my life for you, that my body was 
broken and my blood shed for you." The next day Jesus was 



84 ' MY THREE KEYS 

crucified; His body was broken and His blood was shed on 
the cross. Ever since then we have had in our churches a 
simple meal, which we call the Lord's Supper, when we come 
together and eat the bread which the minister breaks and 
drink the wine to show that we remember that Jesus gave 
His life for us. 



XXVI 
GIVING UP 

How hard it is to give tip! When my brothers and I 
were young men living at home, one of my brothers was 
engaged to a young lady who lived a long way from our 
house. He used to go to the barn after supper, hitch up the 
horse, and drive out to the girl's home. I remember one 
very cold winter night when he went out to the barn as 
usual to get the horse, but found the door locked. He came 
back into the house and asked where the key was and was 
told the hired man had taken it home with him. Then 
Mother told him that it was such a cold night she was afraid 
he would freeze if he went to call, so she had the man lock 
up early and go home. Well, you should have seen that 
young man — so angry and determined ! But he couldn't 
get the barn open, so he did what he thought was the next 
best thing — he fretted and fumed a while and then went off 
to bed. He had made up his mind that he was going to 
make that call, and he found it hard to give up. 

I heard of a girl who wanted a new coat. She had seen 
a coat which another girl had and she wanted one like it. 
But her mother and father didn't have much money to spend 
on clothes, so she had to wear a coat which had become too 
small for her next oldest sister. I am glad you didn't see 
her or hear her when her mother told her she would have 
to wear her sister's coat. My, but it was hard for her to 
give up ! 

How many times I've heard girls and boys say, "If I can't 
do my way, I won't play." None of us likes to give up. 

David, the king, didn't act that way. He tried to follow 
the Bible verse which tells us to serve God with a perfect 
mind. He was very rich and had built himself a beautiful 

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86 MY THREE KEYS 

palace in Jerusalem. But no church had been built; the 
people still worshiped in the tent they used when they were 
traveling in the wilderness. When David looked at his own 
comfortable home and then at the poor house used for God's 
worship, he felt very bad. He thought it wasn't right for 
him to live in such a fine place while the God who had been 
so good to him had such a poor place. He made up his mind 
that he would build a church. 

He spoke to Nathan, a wise man who lived with him, and 
told him what he was going to do. But that very night God 
spoke to Nathan and said, "Go and tell David that he can't 
build the church." In the morning Nathan went to David 
and said, "King David, God has asked me to tell you that 
you mustn't build him a house." Do you suppose David 
began to sulk and say, "But I want to build the church; I 
know it's right for me to build it. I am rich and see no 
reason why I shouldn't build it. I don't see why God won't 
let me do what I want to do"? Nothing of the kind. He 
called the people together and told them about it, and then 
he made a wonderful prayer to God, actually thanking Him 
for His great kindness to him. David didn't find it hard to 
give up, because he was certain that God knew best. 

And Jesus was like that. He once prayed asking His 
Father in heaven to let Him do His own way, but He put 
these words in His prayer, "Nevertheless not what I want 
to do, but what you want me to do." And then He gave up 
His own way, because He was sure of what His Father 
wanted Him to do. 

It is hard to give up, but let us try to find out what is 
best, even if it isn't what we think we want, and then with 
a perfect heart and a willing mind do it. 



XXVII 
OUR GUIDE 

Once I was in New York City and I wanted to go in an 
automobile to my home in New Jersey. But I didn't know 
the way. What do you think I should have done? Ask 
somebody to tell me the way, you say. Yes, that would help 
some. Follow the railroad track? That would be rather 
difficult because I should have to keep on the road and the 
road doesn't always run alongside the railroad. 

Well, I will tell you what I did. I found a chauffeur who 
knew the way and let him guide the car, and I reached home 
safely. There was another way I could have done. Can any 
of you guess? Read the signboards? Yes, that would have 
helped a lot, and I think I could have found the way. 

One time there were a great many people who were travel- 
ing. They were going from one place to another, but they 
didn't know the way. God had promised to guide them, for 
they were His people. They were surrounded by enemies; 
they were in a wild country where there were no roads and 
they didn't know what to do. They needed a guide very 
much. Just as I got a chauffeur who knew the way, so God 
gave them a man to guide them. His name was Moses. To 
get him ready for this journey, God had had him live for 
forty years in this desert, through which the people had to 
go, so that when the time came he would know the way. 

Then to help Moses God put up signboards. They weren't 
exactly like our signboards, but they served the same pur- 
pose. After the people had pitched the tent in which they 
were going to worship while they were on the journey, God 
put a great white cloud over it. And when it was time for 
them to stop, the cloud stopped. You would suppose that 
it would be hard to see the cloud at night. So it would, and 

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83 MY THREE KEYS 

God knew it would. A wonderful thing happened: at night 
the side of the cloud that was toward the travelers glowed 
with a great fire, and of course they could see it. So whether 
they moved in the daytime or by night, they had their leader 
who knew the way and the fiery cloud above them. 

Those people ought to have been very thankful to have 
such help. But they weren't. One time they wanted to go 
back into Egypt where they had suffered so much, another 
time they would have been willing to kill Moses, their 
leader; they were grumbling and growling most of the time. 
But Moses was patient and the cloud kept guiding them, so 
that they did finally reach the end of their journey. 

Do you know we are a good deal like those people in the 
wilderness? We know so little. We are going along day by 
day and year by year, but we don't know what is ahead of 
us any more than the Israelites did. And God knows that 
we need a guide, so He has given us one. Sometimes we call 
it conscience, something inside of us that tells us where to 
go and what to do. A four-year-old boy saw a little spotted 
turtle sunning himself. He lifted up a stick to strike the 
turtle, as he had seen other boys kill squirrels. Years later, 
when he was telling about it, he said, "Something checked 
my little arm, and a voice within me said, clear and loud, 
'It is wrong!'" He was greatly surprised and ran home to 
his mother and asked her what it was that told him it was 
wrong. "She wiped a tear from her eye with her apron," 
he says, "and taking me in her arms said, 'Some men call it 
conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God. If you 
listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer, and 
always guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear or dis- 
obey, then it will fade out little by little and leave you all 
in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends upon 
heeding this little voice/ " 

Will you listen for this guiding voice and obey? 



XXVIII 
SEEKING HELP 

What a difference it makes where we go for help or 
whom we ask to help us ! If you girls should ask me to 
help you knit a sweater, could I do it? My wife could, if 
you asked her, but not I. Or if you boys were getting up a 
baseball team and should ask me to show you how to throw 
a curved ball, could I do it? Christy Mathewson could, but 
not I. It makes all the difference in the world whom we ask 
to help us. 

One time Jesus had had a long, hard day. He had been 
busy helping people on the shore, as they had crowded around 
Him. He had been preaching and arguing with the people, 
and as evening approached He said to His friends, "Let's 
go over to the other side of the lake." He was tired out 
and wanted to get away from the crowd and rest. 

Soon after the boat got started He fell asleep. By and 
by a storm came up and the little lake was so rough that the 
disciples, though they had fished there many times, were 
frightened. At first they let Jesus sleep on : they remembered 
how tired He was, and they did all they could to row to shore. 

But, in spite of their efforts the waves were too much for 
them and they thought they were going to be drowned. Finally 
they went to the stern of the boat where Jesus was sleeping. 
Rather roughly, I imagine, they woke Him and cried out, 
"Don't you care if we are drowned?" Jesus woke, stood 
up, looked at the wild billows and said quietly, "Peace, be 
still." It was as if He were talking to an angry child. No 
wonder the disciples were astonished, for as soon as He spoke 
the sea became calm. They looked at Him in wonder and 
one of them said, "What manner of man is this, that even 

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90 MY THREE KEYS 

the wind and the waves obey Him?" They had gone to the 
right person for help. Jesus can do anything. 

There was once a king who thought he could do anything. 
His courtiers told him he could. They said, "Why, if you 
should tell the waves of the sea to come just so far and no 
farther, they would stop where you told them to stop." The 
foolish old king, who was also very conceited, thought that 
this was so. He had his throne brought down to the edge 
of the ocean and then he called out to the sea, "You must 
not come any farther than this." But the tide came in and 
the waves lapped at his feet; they touched the throne and 
began to wash against it, and as the king saw that what he 
said made no difference, he had to acknowledge that only 
God could control the sea, and he went back to his palace 
a wiser man. If the disciples had gone to such a man for 
help their ship would have been battered to pieces. 

How much we need help in all sorts of things ! Here's 
my watch; it has stopped running; do I take it to a black- 
smith or a carpenter? No, I take it to a jeweler. Here's a 
trolley car that isn't running. What's the matter? Some 
one looks up and sees that the arm is not against the wire 
where the electricity is. No wonder it doesn't run. It can't 
move itself. Well, we are not unlike that — we can't help 
ourselves. Let us go to the right one for help. 



XXIX 
FAITHFULNESS 

Once upon a time, in the narrow space between two build- 
ings in a city, there grew a tree. On one side was a blank 
wall and on the other a poor tenement house, but the tree 
put forth its fresh leaves even amid these dingy surround- 
ings. One day an old rat who lived near by said to the tree, 
"Why do you take so much trouble ? I wouldn't." The. tree 
only answered, "It's my business. It's the thing I have to do. 
All my family do it." But a sick girl in the tenement house 
called her mother and said, "Mother, see, it is spring. The 
tree is putting out its pretty green leaves. I shall grow 
better now." And the mother's heart leaped for joy. 

Then came the hot summer and the tree shook its clean, 
cool leaves in the wind. Again the old rat spoke up : "It is 
a pity for you to do as you do. If you did something useful 
I'd think better of you. Why do you take all this trouble?" 
"It's the thing I have to do. All my family do it," answered 
the tree. And again the sick girl looked at the tree and said 
to her mother, "I couldn't stand this heat if it were not for 
the shade of this dear tree. When the wind rustles the 
leaves, it seems so much cooler." And the old, faithful tree 
just stood there doing its duty. We want people who, like the 
tree, will be faithful, doing always what it is their duty to do. 

You remember Joseph — how faithful he was through all 
those long years, getting ready, when the time came, to help 
his family. 

One of the most faithful persons I know of was that little 
girl, Miriam, Moses's sister. You remember how the wicked 
king had said that all boy babies must be killed. When Moses 
was born you know what they did with him — hid him so that 
the soldiers of the wicked king wouldn't find him. Near 

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92 MY 'THREE KEYS 

the river where he was hidden in a basket boat his little 
sister Miriam stood to watch over him. It would have been 
so easy for her to have said she was afraid, but she didn't; 
she just stood there where she could hear him if he cried. 
And so when the princess came along and found the baby, 
Miriam was there, ready to suggest that she could find a 
nurse for him. And you know how she ran off and brought 
back the baby's own mother to be his nurse. Moses was 
saved because his little sister was faithful. 



XXX 
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL 

For many years I have been talking to the children in 
Sunday school about what God has told us to do and what 
not to do. I've told them about praying and reading the 
Bible and giving to the poor; about helping others and being 
unselfish; about keeping Sunday and going to church; and a 
lot of other things. There is one Commandment about which 
I thought I would never talk to my child friends — that is, 
the one which says, "Thou shalt not steal." 

The children I know in Sunday school have always been 
such honest children and have such good fathers and mothers 
that I thought it would be wasting time to tell them that 
God said, "Thou shalt not steal." Because none of them ever 
thought of stealing, anyhow. But one Sunday, after Sunday 
school, a lady came to me and said, "Mr. Murray, I laid my 
purse down on this chair, and now it's gone. I think that 
little girl over there has it, for I saw her have one that looks 
just like mine." Of course I asked the little girl and she 
said the purse she had was hers. But I didn't feel satis- 
fied, so I asked her mother about it and her mother said 
that her little girl had come home from Sunday school with 
a purse, which she said some one had given to her; the purse 
she brought home was not her purse. And by and by we 
found that it was the lady's purse. The little girl had stolen 
it. I do not need to tell you how sad her mother felt and 
how she cried when she found that her little girl was a thief. 
So I said to myself, "When a lesson about stealing comes 
round I will tell the children that God has said, 'Thou shalt 
not steal.' " 

Today we have that lesson. Elisha was a friend of God. 
He could do wonderful things. One day a man called Naa- 

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94 MY THREE KEYS 

man, who was very sick and who had been everywhere trying 
to get well, came to Elisha and he cured him. Of course he 
was very grateful, and wanted to give Elisha money, and a 
present besides. But Elisha hadn't cured him for money, 
so he said he couldn't take anything for what he had done. 
But one of Elisha's servants happened to be standing near 
by, and when he saw the silver and the beautiful clothes 
that Naaman wanted to give to Elisha, he thought it was 
too bad to let such valuable things get away. Although he 
had heard Elisha say that he couldn't receive anything for 
the cure, this servant, Gehazi, ran after Naaman, who had 
started for home. When he caught up with him he said, 
"Two poor young men have come to visit my master, and he 
wants to know if you will please give them some of the 
things you were going to give him." He had to tell a lie, you 
see. Naaman thought he was telling the truth, so he gave 
him the things he had offered to Elisha. He carried the 
money and the clothes home, and then he did what every 
thief has to do — he hid them. He was afraid to let anyone 
see them. But Elisha found that he had been away and 
asked him where he had been. Gehazi said he hadn't been 
anywhere, and then Elisha said, "Oh, Gehazi, I know where 
you've been and I know what you've done. I saw you run- 
ning after Naaman. You will be sick in Naaman's place." 
And Gehazi had to live the rest of his miserable life with 
the nasty disease which Naaman had had. That was the way 
God punished him for being a thief. 

And God can see us even when no one else can. One time 
a man went to steal corn in a neighbor's field. He took his 
little boy along to hold the bag while he pulled the ears of 
corn. When they reached the field the father looked all 
around to see if anyone was looking, and then he gave the 
boy the bag to hold. "Father," the boy said, "there is one 
direction you haven't looked." The father was frightened 
and thought his son saw some one, but the boy said, "You 
haven't looked up. There is some one in that direction who 



THOU SHALT NOT STEAL 95 

I am sure can see us." That is the direction in which we 
ought to look. 

The trouble with Gehazi — as with everyone who takes 
what doesn't belong to him — was that his heart was not right. 
Evil thoughts begin in the heart and then the hands do the 
stealing. Our hearts must be made right if we want our 
hands to do right. 

One time an old colored man had a clock that stopped 
running. He couldn't see that anything was wrong with it, 
but he knew the hands had stopped going round. So he 
took them off and carried them to the jeweler and told him 
how the hands wouldn't go round the clock any more, and 
asked him to fix them. The jeweler laughed at him, of course, 
for it wasn't the hands that needed fixing, it was the inside 
of the clock. 

That's the way with us. The Bible says, "Keep thy heart 
with all diligence." 



XXXI 
EASTER 

Of all the glad days in the year it seems to me that Easter 
Sunday is the gladdest. All Sundays are glad days, but Easter 
Sunday I think is the gladdest. For a long time the grass 
has been dead, the trees have stretched out their bare 
branches, the cold winds have whistled through them, and 
we've kept huddled together to keep warm. But when Easter 
comes, things are waking up. The grass is beginning to look 
green; leaves are coming on the branches again; the air is 
balmier ; here and there a flower has appeared ; and we throw 
off some of our heavy clothes. Yes, things are waking from 
their long winter sleep, and we all rejoice in the new life that 
seems to come upon the earth at Easter time. 

Everybody knows the story of the little girl who thought 
she had found an old dead onion in the cellar, but her mother 
told her it was the bulb of an Easter lily ; it wasn't dead, only 
asleep. So she planted the bulb and said, "Good-night, it will 
soon be morning, then you'll be glad I planted you." Then 
the sun shone on the earth, the rain watered it, and the little 
bulb began to get warm, until one day out popped its green 
head — the lily bulb was awake. And it grew up in the sun- 
shine and spread out its leaves and at last it had on the top 
of it a beautiful white lily. Then the little girl exclaimed, 
"Mother, can this be the old dry bulb that I thought was 
dead?" And her mother said, "Yes, it was not dead, but 
sleeping." On Easter Sunday they carried the lily to church, 
where it heard the people singing, "I am He that liveth and 
was dead; and behold I am alive forevermore," and the lily 
thought they were singing about it. But soon the people 
sang again, "For Christ is risen, the angels say, at happy 

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EASTER 97 

Easter time." Then the lily knew why everybody was so 
happy: not only had the flowers and leaves and grass come 
to life, but it was the celebration of the day when Christ 
who had been dead and buried came to life, and He had said 
to His followers, "Because I live ye shall live also." 

It's a beautiful story, the Easter story, though some parts 
of it are very sad. Jesus and His disciples had gone to a 
garden where He often went when He wanted to be away 
from the crowd. His enemies had been trying to catch Him, 
and now a man who seemed to be one of His best friends had 
gone to these enemies and told them where they could find 
Jesus. "How shall we know which is He?" they asked, and 
Judas — that was the wicked man's name — said, "I'll go up to 
Him and kiss Him ; that will show you the right man." 

Judas did his part and the Roman soldiers arrested Jesus. 
They had a sort of trial, in which they said they found Him 
guilty, and He was led away to a hill outside the city and 
there between two thieves He was crucified. That was Fri- 
day. These enemies of His were terribly afraid that in some 
way He might get out of the rock tomb into which they put 
His body, so besides rolling a big stone over the opening they 
sealed it, and put soldiers in front of it to watch it. Satur- 
day was their Sunday, on which no work could be done, so 
Jesus' friends just kept quiet that day. But as soon as Sun- 
day came, even before the sun was up, the good women who 
had seen how carelessly the cruel soldiers had buried their 
beloved Friend rushed to the grave with sweet spices to 
embalm His precious body. They wondered how they would 
get into the grave, for they had seen that big stone put over 
the door and they knew they couldn't roll it away them- 
selves. You can imagine their surprise when they got there 
and saw that the stone already had been rolled away ! When 
they looked in where the soldiers had put the body of Jesus 
they saw only an angel and the angel said, "You shouldn't 
look for the living among the dead. Jesus isn't here. He 
has risen as He said He would." It was Easter Sunday, the 



98 MY THREE KEYS 

very first Easter Sunday the world ever saw. Jesus had in- 
deed risen from the dead. 

Does it seem strange that one should rise from the dead? 
Listen to this: There was a great scientist named Faraday. 
On a shelf in his laboratory stood a silver cup. One day it 
fell from the shelf into a tub containing acid. The acid ate 
into the silver and dissolved it, so that the cup had disap- 
peared. When Faraday realized what had happened he put 
some chemical into the acid, which caused the silver to come 
together in the bottom of the tub so that it could be taken out 
of the acid. Then Faraday gave the lump of metal to a sil- 
versmith, who soon molded it into a cup again. If a man 
could do this, could not God bring to life one who had died? 

As soon as the women heard the angel and saw the empty 
tomb they ran rejoicing to find the disciples, those men who 
had been Jesus' particular friends, for the angel had said to 
them, "Go quickly and tell his disciples, He is risen from 
the dead." And as they ran Jesus Himself met them and He 
said to them also, "Go, tell my brethren." At last they found 
these men and told them, but the disciples wouldn't believe 
them; they couldn't see how anyone who was dead could 
come to life again. Still Peter and John wanted to find out 
for themselves, so they started to run to the garden where 
Jesus had been buried. John was younger than Peter and 
got there first. He was rather timid, so he just stood out- 
side and looked into the empty grave. In a minute or two 
Peter came running up; he didn't stop at all: he rushed 
right into the sepulcher, and when John saw what Peter had 
done he went in, too. Yes, it was true. The grave was 
empty. Jesus had risen from the dead. No wonder they 
rejoiced and no wonder Easter Sunday is such a glad day 
for us, for we believe that as Jesus came out of the grave 
alive, so we who believe on Him shall live forevermore. 



XXXII 
THANKSGIVING 

There was once a little boy named Jack, who said, "What 
in the world have I to be thankful for?" Of course he said 
it without thinking. I suppose something had happened that 
made him cross, and he spoke right out, "What in the world 
have I to be thankful for?" 

Just then the Thanksgiving Angel stood before him. First 
she touched his eyes and then Jack couldn't see ; then she 
touched his feet and he couldn't move. This made Jack fairly 
scream, he was so frightened. And the angel said, "Why, 
Jack, how many things you had to be thankful for. Oh, 
there's one more thing," and then she touched his lips and 
he couldn't speak. 

"Well, Jack," the angel said to him, "you can still hear — 
you can be thankful for that. Don't forget how many things 
you have to be thankful for." 

When the angel went away Jack soon found that he could 
see and walk and speak as he had before, and you may be 
sure he was a thankful boy and never again asked this ques- 
tion. Did you ever try to think of all the things you have 
to be thankful for ? 

One trouble with us children is that while we know how 
much we have to be thankful for, we forget to show how 
thankful we are. One day Jesus met ten sick men and told 
them to go to a certain place and they would be cured. They 
did go and were cured, but only one of -them came back to 
thank Jesus. It was to this one that Jesus said, sorrowfully, 
"Didn't I cure ten men? Where are the other nine?" 

Did you ever see people sit down to dinner with a table 
loaded with good things which a heavenly Father had given 
them, through the rain and the sunshine and rich earth, and 

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ioo MY THREE KEYS 

never show in any way that they were thankful for these 
gifts? 

I think this is one reason why every year we have a 
Thanksgiving Day, so that we can be reminded of all the 
things we have to be thankful for and can take time to give 
thanks for them. 

I have read of a little girl who called it "Thank you Day." 
I like that name for it. She rushed out to the barn and said 
to the cow, "You good old cow, I had some milk for break- 
fast and I know you gave it to me and I've come to thank 
you for it. Mother told me this was Thank you Day !" And 
so she went from one to the other. To the old horse she 
said, "Thank you for all the good rides you've given me." 
To the sheep she said, "Thank you for the warm clothes you 
gave me." And she said "Thank you" to the chickens for 
the good eggs they had given her. 

There's a beautiful story in the Bible of some people who 
didn't forget to be thankful. They were God's people, and 
they had been badly treated for long years in Egypt. At 
last, however, God showed them a way out. In the night 
they all rose up and started for the promised land. By and 
by they came to a strip of water and they wondered how they 
could get across. But again God helped them and made a 
pathway for them through the Red Sea, so that every one of 
them got across safely. When their enemies tried to follow 
them the water rushed back and drowned them. As soon 
as they were on dry land they sat down and sang a Thanks- 
giving song: 

"Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who 
is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing 
wonders ?" 



XXXIII 

HEAVEN 

One time I was in Yokohama, Japan, half way round the 
world from New York. I had to see about my steamship 
tickets, so I went to the company's office and, after arrang- 
ing about them, I fell into conversation with the clerk. 
"Where do you live?" I asked him. "Where do I live?" he 
said, "I live in New York. I am just staying here until I 
can earn enough money to get started in business when I go 
back." He was in Yokohama, thousands of miles away, but 
his home was in New York. 

When I was a boy I went to college in New Haven and 
for the best part of four years I stayed in New Haven, but 
that wasn't my home. I was there while I was being edu- 
cated, that was all; and when I had been graduated it didn't 
take me long to get home. For the child's home is where his 
father and mother, and maybe some brothers and sisters, 
live. 

One day Jesus talked with His friends about His home. 
He was staying in Jerusalem, but that wasn't His home, any 
more than Yokohama was that clerk's home, or New Haven 
was mine. And He called it "My Father's house." That 
was His home — the place where His Father lived. And 
as He talked with His friends He said, "I'm going to that 
home to get it ready for you; I want you to be with me 
there." Sometimes, you know, it seems as if this earth were 
home and we were meant to stay here. But Jesus wants us 
to know that there is a real home waiting for us, where we 
shall go after our education is finished; He wants us to know 
that He loves us so much that He has gone on ahead to get 
it ready for us. 

One time there was a gardener who had a greenhouse in 

IOI 



io2 MY THREE KEYS 

which a great many plants were growing, and they were 
very happy all together, though sometimes it seemed rather 
hot and close shut in under the glass. One da}' the old 
gardener came into the greenhouse and after he had looked 
round carefully he took up one plant and carried it outdoors. 
The poor flower felt so bad it would have cried if it could. 
It thought to itself, "Now I am going to leave this nice house 
and all my friends. It's too bad. I wish I could stay here." 
But the gardener took it outdoors, broke away the pot that 
crowded it so, and planted it in the earth he had prepared 
for it. And, oh, the plant did feel so good. It could stretch 
its roots out, the breeze was cool and lovely, the rain was 
refreshing, and night and morning it heard the birds sing 
as it had never heard them in the greenhouse. It wasn't long 
before the happy plant said, "Well, I know now that the 
gardener knew best." And if the plants back in the green- 
house could have seen the happy plant they would have 
thought so, too. 

But while Jesus is getting our real home ready for us, He 
doesn't want to do it all alone; He wants us to get ready, 
too. He will do His part, but He wants us to do ours. 

They tell a story about a woman who went to heaven. 
She had been very selfish when she lived on this earth — she 
wanted everything for herself, and it was only when there 
was anything left over that others might have some. As 
she looked around at the mansions she saw a little one, and 
the angel told her that that was for her. "Why," she said, 
"I can't live in that; I'm used to a big, beautiful house; that 
won't do for me." "Well," the angel said, "I can't help it. 
We build your mansion here out of what you send up to us 
and you haven't sent very much." By and by they came to 
a very beautiful mansion. "Whose is that?" she asked. 
"That," said the angel, "is for your washerwoman. She sent 
up lots of things to build with." "Oh, yes," the woman said, 
"I remember; she would give away everything she had." 
What are you sending up to Heaven to build your mansion 



HEAVEN 103 

with? Jesus is preparing the home for you; are you 
helping? 

I wonder if you have heard the story of the little lame boy, 
who was a prince and didn't know it and who lived in a hut 
in the forest with an old man. The old man told him one 
day that he was the son of a king and that a beautiful home 
was being prepared for him. This made the boy very happy. 
So when his back hurt him he thought of the palace, for the 
old man had told him that there was no pain there. And 
at night when it was dark the boy was afraid sometimes; 
but the man told him that in the land where his palace was 
there was no night, and that made him happy again. And 
isn't it true that we are children of a King and that a happy 
home is being prepared for us ? How happy we should be ! 
that home, of course, is Heaven. 



XXXIV 
GIFTS 

Did you ever hear the story of the Christmas Angel ? He 
carried a pair of scales so big that he could weigh anything 
that was brought to him. The curious thing about his scales 
was that he could tell by weighing a present how much hap- 
piness it would bring with it. This he did by putting the 
gift in one side of the scales and a beautiful gem in the other 
side; if the gift weighed more than the gem it would 
bring joy. 

The story goes on to tell how a rich man brought a piano 
he was going to give his daughter. When it was rolled into 
the pan it bounced up into the air, as if it had been made of 
feathers. The angel told the man his gift wouldn't bring 
any happiness, because he was giving it in pride and intended 
to boast about it. 

A young woman put into the pan a book which she was 
going to give to her father. It went up and the jewel went 
down. The angel told her the trouble was that she was giving 
the book, not because she loved her father, but because she 
wanted to read it herself. And so the gifts were weighed 
one after another, without much indication of happiness. 
At last a little girl brought a spectacle-wiper she had made 
for her grandmother. She had saved her pennies and had 
bought the chamois skin and had embroidered it herself. 
This time the jewel flew into the air and the spectacle-wiper 
sank down. Do you know why? 

Wouldn't it be curious if some such angel could weigh our 
birthday presents ! Here's a little girl who is going to Mar- 
garet's birthday party. She remembers that when she had 
her birthday Margaret brought her a pretty book, and so 
she gets her mother to buy her a book to take to Margaret, 

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GIFTS 105 

but she only does it because Margaret had given her a book. 
Would the jewel or the book go up in the scales? 

Or maybe it's a boy who is going to a friend's party and 
he says, "I suppose I must take him something, everybody 
else does." What would happen to his gift ? 

I wonder how the scales would work with a gift we read 
about in the Bible. Jesus was sitting in the temple near the 
box where people dropped in their money, watching the men 
and women as they came up. Here comes a rich old fellow 
who fumbles around in his pocket, and at last takes out a 
few copper coins and throws them in; another one comes 
along and drops a lot of money into the box. Finally a poor 
woman comes up the steps. You can see by her clothes that 
she hasn't much money. She takes out a worn little bag, 
opens it very carefully and brings out two very small coins 
worth hardly as much as a cent. Jesus hadn't said a word 
while the others were giving their money, but as soon as He 
saw what the poor woman had done He called His disciples, 
the men whom He was teaching, and said, "Did you see that 
poor woman and all those rich people? Some of them put 
a lot of money in the box, but that poor woman has just put 
in more than all of them. She put in all she had." It is 
not how much we give, but how we give it. 

And Jesus still watches our gifts. I don't suppose the 
poor woman knew that He was watching; she certainly didn't 
give because she expected Him to see what she did and then 
praise her for it. But Jesus saw what she did, and what the 
others did, too, even if she and they didn't know it. So it is 
now. He sees and knows why we give. He is like the 
gift scales. 

In the mint where they coin the metals, gold or silver or 
copper, into dollars and quarters and pennies, there is a 
machine which reaches a long arm over a tray down which 
the coins come sliding one by one. As each one comes along, 
the arm, which is part of the weighing machine, pushes the 
full weight coins to one side and the short weight ones to the 



io6 MY THREE KEYS 

other, and in this way it separates the good ones from the 
bad. Jesus does this with our gifts. 

Some gifts are like the gift of the poor widow — they please 
Jesus. I'm sure a gift I read about must have pleased Him 
greatly. They were making an offering in church for mis- 
sions. The preacher had been telling the people about the 
wonderful things the missionaries had been able to do with 
the people in the heathen land where he had gone to live, 
and he urged them not only to give money but to give them- 
selves. When the usher came to one pew there was a little 
boy there. When the plate was passed to him he said, "Put 
it down lower/' The usher thought the little boy couldn't 
reach it to put in his money, so he held it a little lower; but 
the boy said, "Put it lower." Then the usher held it almost 
down to the floor and the boy just got in himself. I think 
the gift scales would almost topple over with a gift like that. 

"The Lord loveth a cheerful giver." 



XXXV 
A MISSIONARY TALK 

What a strange thing it would be if a father cared for 
only a part of his children ! Suppose there were two boys 
and two girls in the family and the father should say, "Oh, 
I don't care for those boys; I'll only feed and clothe the 
girls." What a queer father he would be ! 

But that is exactly what some people now think about 
their heavenly Father: that He cares only for His children 
who happen to live in the United States, and not for those 
who live in China. What a curious heavenly Father He 
would be if this were true ! 

A certain man named William Carey who lived in England 
was so sure that his heavenly Father cared for all His chil- 
dren, not only those in England but those in far-away India, 
that he wanted to go to India and tell the people about his 
heavenly Father who was also their heavenly Father; he 
wanted to tell them that God did care for them. But a lot 
of good people, whom Carey asked, to help him, said, "Don't 
you bother with those people away ofT in India." 

Long ago in Bible times God tried to teach people that He 
was the Father of all His children and that He cared for 
all of them, no matter who they were and where they lived. 
There were then two kinds of people in Palestine — part were 
called Jews and all other people were called Gentiles. The 
Jews thought they were the only ones God cared for; they 
thought that their heavenly Father didn't care at all for the 
other people on the earth. I'll tell you how God showed 
these Jews that He did care. 

There was a soldier, Cornelius by name, who wasn't a Jew 
but a Gentile, and who lived in a place called Caesarea. 
Over in another city not very far away, called Joppa, lived 

107 



io8 MY THREE KEYS 

a man named Peter, a Jew. Peter was one of those who 
thought God didn't care for those other children of His 
called Gentiles. Cornelius was different from many Gentiles, 
for he believed that his heavenly Father did care for him, 
even if he wasn't a Jew, and he not only prayed to his 
heavenly Father, but he tried to help his Father's other 
children. He was terribly frightened one day because an 
angel came to him and said, "Cornelius, I have seen the good 
deeds you've done and I've heard your prayers. Now I 
want you to send to Joppa and get Peter." As soon as he 
could he called two of his servants and sent them with one 
of his soldiers to find Peter. 

In the meantime Peter, in Joppa, had gone up on the 
roof of his house to pray. He used to do this every day. 
After he had finished praying and while he was very hun- 
gry, he fell asleep. And in his dream he saw a great sheet 
tied by the four corners let down from heaven. In it he 
saw all kinds of animals, not only those that Jews were 
allowed to eat, but some that they were forbidden to eat. 

Peter thought he heard some one say, "Rise, Peter, kill 
and eat." This happened three times. But Peter said, "I 
can't do that; I've never eaten anything that Jews are for- 
bidden to eat." Then the voice said, "But, Peter, God says 
you can eat anything." 

He hardly knew what to do, and while he was trying to 
think, the three men from Cornelius came to the door and 
asked for him. After the men had told him who they were 
and why they had come, he made them comfortable for the 
night, and the next day he started with them for Cornelius's 
house. 

They found Cornelius waiting for them. At first Cor- 
nelius wanted to worship Peter as if he were a god, but 
Peter wouldn't let him. Then Peter said, "You know, Cor- 
nelius, I always thought the Jews were better than the Gen- 
tiles. I didn't think God cared for you Gentiles. But 
God has shown me that this isn't so. He has made me 



A MISSIONARY TALK 109 

see that all people are His children and that He cares 
for all of them, not merely for a few who are called 
Jews." This was God's way of teaching Peter and the rest 
of us that He is no respecter of persons, but that all people 
everywhere are His children and that He wants every child 
of His to know that He does care for him. This is what Jesus 
meant when He told His disciples that they should go into 
all the world and preach the Gospel to everybody. This 
is why William Carey wanted to go to India to tell God's 
children out there that their heavenly Father did care. This 
is the reason why we ought to be interested in these other 
children of our heavenly Father — they are His children 
and He loves them just as much as He loves any one of us. 



XXXVI 
THE BIBLE 

There was once an auction sale of books and one man 
gave $50,000 for one volume. It was one of the first books 
ever printed from type and what book do you suppose they 
chose for that honor? The Bible, of course. But the Bible 
is not only a curious and costly book; it is the book that is 
found in more places than any other book. You get a room 
in a hotel and you find it on the bureau; you go into a 
lawyer's office, and there it is; it is in every court-room, in 
all the hospitals, it's everywhere. 

Now in the olden times Bibles were very scarce. They 
weren't printed, but each one was made by hand. A man 
printed the words on sheepskin. Of course such a book was 
too costly to be in people's houses ; usually it was kept in the 
church. If you wanted to read it you had to go to the 
church. 

That was the way it was in the days of King Joash. People 
had gotten tired of going to church and had forgotten about 
the Bible in the church. Little by little the walls had fallen 
down, rubbish had gathered in the place, and the Bible was 
lost in all the refuse. 

But Joash was a good king. He thought people ought to 
go to church. So he set men to work cleaning out the rub- 
bish and putting the church in order. One day underneath 
a lot of old stuff they found a curious book. Everybody 
seemed to have forgotten about the Bible, for they didn't 
know what the book was. Even the king didn't know there 
was such a book, and he, too, was surprised. So he called 
some of his wisest men and gave them the book; then he 
asked them to read it and again he was astonished when 
he learned that it told about God, and what He wanted 

no 



THE BIBLE in 

people to do. The king had it read to the people and very- 
soon it was a new and better community, because the people 
tried to do what God in the Bible asked them to do. 

Now, do you know we treat the Bible very often just as 
those people did? We forget about it. It is in our homes, 
but it gets covered up with other things. Not really cov- 
ered up; I don't mean that we take other things and pile 
them on top of the Bible and hide it in that way. But we 
might just as well do it that way, for we let the other things 
interfere with the Bible. Maybe it's our pretty clothes, or 
Sunday newspapers, or games and other books. It is just 
as if all the things were piled on top of the Bible so that 
we can't see it and very soon we forget about it. 

And what a wonderful book it is ! What interesting stories 
are in it ! There's that one about the trees in Judges 9:8; 
and the story of a shipwreck in the twenty-seventh chapter 
of Acts. What a sad story that is about Job and what a 
wonderful woman Queen Esther was; and none of us can 
forget Samson and David. 

But we ought not to be content merely to read the Bible ; 
we must do what it asks us to do. It wouldn't do us much 
good just to see a fine meal spread out before us; we must 
eat it to get any good out of it. A wise man said, "Be ye 
doers of the word, and not hearers only." 

Two little girls were on their way to school and while 
they were walking along they heard the bell ring. That 
meant they were in danger of being late, which meant that 
both of them would be kept in after school. One of them 
said, "Let's stop and ask the Lord to keep us from being 
late." "No," said the other. "Don't let's do that; let's skip 
right along and pray as we go." She believed in praying, 
but she wanted to do all she could herself. So, too, we must 
not be content with reading the Bible, we must do what it 
tells us to do. 



XXXVII 
JESUS AND THE CHILDREN 

The great hero of the Boer War in South Africa was Lord 
Roberts. Everybody had read about his skill in overcoming 
the enemy and winning the war. He is to the English people 
what General Grant is to us. People like to see such a man. 
One time when I was in Edinburgh I heard that Lord Rob- 
erts was in the city and that he would worship at St. Giles's 
Church on Sunday. My little boy was with me and I was 
especially anxious that he should see the great general, so 
that he could remember him and tell his children that he 
had seen him. 

So when Sunday morning came we climbed the hill to 
St. Giles's, starting early because we thought there might 
be a crowd. Well, there was. When we got up where we 
could see the church it looked to us as if everybody else in 
Edinburgh wanted to see Lord Roberts. We couldn't get 
anywhere near the church, and at last we had to come away 
without seeing him. 

How the people must have crowded to see George Wash- 
ington ! We read that as he passed through cities, as he 
traveled over the country, mothers would hold up their babies 
for him to kiss: they wanted to be able to say always that 
the great President had touched their children; they wanted 
their children to be able to say always that they had seen 
General Washington. 

So it was with Jesus. One time He was passing through 
a town and a great crowd had gathered to see Him, because 
they had heard what a wonderful man He was. There was 
a little man in the village who was very anxious to see Him, 
but he was so small he was afraid he couldn't see over the 
heads of the people who got in front of him. So running 

112 



JESUS AND THE CHILDREN 113 

ahead on one of the streets through which Jesus was going 
to walk, he climbed into a tree and then he saw Him. 

Among others who wanted to see Jesus one time were 
some mothers, who had their babies with them. He was a 
wonderful man and they were anxious that their children 
should be able to say that they, too, had seen Jesus and that 
Jesus had touched them. No doubt the mothers had told 
the children stories of what Jesus had been doing; how He 
healed the sick and fed the hungry, and the children them- 
selves, those who were old enough, must have been eager to 
see Him. 

Well, one day these mothers, and fathers, too, heard that 
Jesus was actually in the village. How they must have 
talked about it ! If only they could get Him to put His hands 
on the boys and girls, just to touch them, and maybe make 
one of His wonderful prayers for them, what a joy it would 
be ! I imagine they dressed in their best clothes before they 
started to look for Jesus. How many of them there were 
I don't know, but there they went to find Jesus. 

But what a disappointment ! There's a big crowd of men 
and women there already and Jesus is talking to them. Some 
of them are sick and He is curing their sickness. Then one 
mother says, "I think that is Peter over there; he is a close 
friend of Jesus, and that's Andrew. Let's ask them to tell 
Jesus we want Him to touch our children." And so one of 
them, I think it must have been a father, tells Peter and 
Andrew what they want. But these two men don't think 
there's any use in disturbing Jesus now, for He's busy with 
grown folk. Then the mothers join in, and the talk gets 
louder, until finally Jesus either hears them or sees them and 
He wants to know what it is all about. I suppose Peter 
would say, "Why, there are some women here who want 
you to touch their children and we've told them that you 
don't want to be bothered." Jesus doesn't like that. He 
doesn't get angry very often, but He is angry now, and 
He tells the disciples not to try to keep them away from Him. 



ii 4 MY THREE KEYS 

"Suffer the little children to come unto me," He says, "and 
forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God." And 
He lets them come close to Him. Then He doesn't merely 
touch them, but He takes them up in His arms one by one 
and blesses them. How He loved little children ! He told 
the big people one time that unless they grew to be like little 
children they could not enter into the Kingdom of God at all. 

Jesus loved little children ! He was like the good Bishop 
who, tired out, went to his room to rest and gave orders 
that he was not to be disturbed, even if the King of France 
called. "But," he added, "if a little child knocks, call me." 
And how the little children loved Jesus and love Him still ! 
One day a missionary in India was giving a stereopticon 
lecture on Christ's life and he had come to the picture of 
Christ with the little children. The picture showed Him 
putting His hand on the head of a little Indian beside Him. 
Suddenly a tiny brown girl ran innocently out of the crowd 
and right against the picture. She wanted to be near 
Him, too. 

May we go to Him and have Him put His hand on us 
and bless us. 



XXXVIII 
SUNDAY 

An army was on the march. The men had tramped a long 
way. The music had helped a good deal, but now they were 
tired out, and their feet smarted and ached. As they were 
passing through a fine piece of woods near a cool spring the 
command came, "Halt ! Fall out !" and the soldiers knew the 
march was over for the day and they could rest. How they 
rushed to the spring for a cool drink ! How they stretched 
out on the grass by the roadside in the welcome shade of the 
trees ! The colonel knew that they would be all the better 
for the rest and that they would do better the next day. 

Every one who carries a watch knows that after a couple 
of years the watch begins to be slow, or stops unexpectedly. 
When you take it to the jeweler he puts that little spyglass 
on his eye and looks into the works, and usually he says, 
"You'll have to leave it here to be cleaned." And so the 
watch isn't wound at night, but is left with the jeweler for 
a rest, while it is being cleaned, and when it comes back it 
runs correctly and is a better watch. 

Well, people are like an army on the march, or like a watch 
that has been running for some time. We can't go on for- 
ever, we have to stop and rest, we need to be cleaned up. 

God knew that we, His children, would need rest and 
cleansing, so He arranged that we should keep going for 
six days and then He added one day for us to rest. We call 
it Sabbath or Sunday. He didn't give us seven days at first, 
and then change His mind and take one day away from 
us; but He gave us six days and then, in great kindness, 
knowing how much we would need to rest, He gave us an- 
other day, an extra day, for that. It was His gift to His 
children. 

"5 



n6 MY THREE KEYS 

One time a great nation didn't want to acknowledge that 
the day of rest was God's gift. A law was passed that men 
should rest one day out of every ten instead of one out of 
every seven. After these people had tried it awhile, they 
found that God knew how much rest His children needed, 
and they went back to resting every seventh day. 

How careful we are of anything a friend gives to us ! We 
don't like to have anyone hurt it. We take better care of 
it than we do of something we have bought ourselves. And 
when the gift is from a father who loves us, how careful 
of it we are ! That's the way we ought to treat this wonder- 
ful gift of a day every week which our heavenly Father 
has made to us, His children. We ought to treat that day 
as a precious thing and not spoil it or neglect it, or make it 
just like the other six days. Our Father said, when He 
made us this gift, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it 
holy," and He meant by that just what I've been telling you 
about taking care of a precious gift. 

One way to find out what we ought to do with this precious 
gift of a day is to find out from the Bible what Jesus did 
with it when He was here on the earth, for the Father who 
gave it was His Father, too. We find that Jesus went to 
church on the Sabbath, and that He tried to do somebody 
some good on the Sabbath; if we follow His example we are 
pretty sure to use our gift in the right way. 

Of course, our heavenly Father could have told us just 
what we could do and exactly what we couldn't do on Sun- 
day. He could have arranged it so that if we broke one of 
His rules about Sunday we would at once be punished. But 
He didn't do that way. He said, rather, "You are my chil- 
dren; I love you and I will trust you to take good care of 
my gift." So He lets us do what we please with it. He 
wants us to use it aright because we love Him. 

One time a boy was going away from home. His father 
took him out walking. They went through the old orchard 
where the boy had often gathered apples ; they walked through 



SUNDAY 117 

the fragrant hayfield where he had worked hard on hot 
summer days; they passed over the brook, where he had 
played many a time; and, last of all, they went into the 
sweet-smelling old barn and looked at the horses and cows. 
Then they walked back to the house and all the father said 
was, "Son, you are going away from home; do as you have 
a mind to." 

I think God did something like that with Sunday; He 
gave it to us out of His great love and He trusts us to use 
it as the precious gift that it is. 



XXXIX 

THE SPEECH THAT NEVER WAS 
DELIVERED 

I have a speech which, though it is forty years old, has 
never been delivered. It is the speech which, when I was a 
boy in high school, I intended to give if I were ever invited 
to address that school. We used to have frequent visitors 
who, we thought, were rather old fogies, and who were con- 
tinually giving us good advice; they kept telling us that we 
must think of the future, that we were preparing for after 
life, that we were forming habits which would make or mar 
us. I resolved that when I grew up and was invited to speak 
I should astonish both teachers and scholars by telling the 
boys and girls to have a good time now, and that the future 
would look after itself. That was the speech I was going 
to make. 

But when my time came, and I was invited to address the 
boys and girls in my old school, I found I couldn't use that 
speech. I found myself talking just as those old fossils had 
talked forty years ago, and saying just about the same things 
that they said. 

For when I looked over my proposed speech and tried to 
test it by experience, I didn't dare deliver it. I tried to find 
some illustrations which would show that what I intended 
to say was true. I wanted to find some boys who had lived 
as I thought I should advise them to live, and I found two 
or three, but they were not very helpful. It would never 
do to tell boys and girls to do as they had done. Here was 
a boy, now a grown man, who had lived up to the theory 
which I intended to offer, but he was busy looking for a 
job. Here was another boy, now over forty years of age, 

118 



SPEECH THAT NEVER WAS DELIVERED 119 

who likewise had adopted the theory, and he was standing 
on the street corner hoping, or rather not hoping, that some 
one would employ him. 

Yes, all the illustrations confirmed the statements of the 
old fogies. I found a man successfully managing a large 
department of a big office. They told me that when he came 
there as a green boy, everybody made fun of him. The 
other clerks once gave him a letter to carry from lower 
Broadway to a store on Canal Street and wait for an answer. 
The note asked the proprietor of the hardware store to 
deliver a grindstone to the boy. The boy took the stone and 
rolled it all the way down Broadway and delivered it to his 
tormentors. How could you keep such a boy down? 

One time I got positions for two boys of about the same 
age. Some time afterwards one morning when the telephone 
in my office rang, the operator said somebody in the police 
station wanted to talk to me. I asked who it was and there 
was one of those boys asking me to come up and get him out. 
He had been out the night before with some hoodlums, and 
had been arrested, and there he was. I found that if he hap- 
pened to get down to his office a few minutes before eight, 
the time he was expected to begin, he would stand round out- 
side smoking cigarettes. His time was eight o'clock and he 
wasn't going to begin a minute sooner. No wonder he was 
in jail. 

A few days later I had a call from the other young man. 
He told me that he had gotten married and that he had been 
given an interest in the business. I heard later that one 
winter's day, when there was a severe blizzard, he was the 
only one who got to the office. "How did you do it?" I 
asked him. "Why," he said, "I saw when I went to bed 
there was going to be a heavy snowstorm, so I got up at 
three o'clock and went to the office." He beat the blizzard. 

I am telling you this because some of you are planning to 
make that same speech I was planning to make, and I want 
to save you the trouble of preparing it, for you will never 



120 MY THREE KEYS 

deliver it. Time and experience will make it useless. You 
will be compelled to say the same things we old fellows say: 
Youth is the time of preparation, get ready now, form hab- 
its now — your future will be what you make it. 



XL 
DOING NOTHING 

"What a man is depends very largely on what he does 
when he has nothing to do." That is, you can tell what kind 
of a man he is by what he does when he is free to do as he 
pleases. I don't remember where I read that impressive 
statement, but it is a striking illustration of a truth found in 
the boyhood of Jesus. He had gone with His parents to the 
feast at Jerusalem and when the ceremonies ended Jesus was 
free. He had nothing to do. His parents thought He was 
lost. What He did showed what He was: He sought the 
temple, His Father's house, and discussed with the learned 
men the great problems which were seething in His own 
mind. 

I knew another boy whose parents thought he was lost. 
He was at college and they hadn't heard from him for some 
time, so his old father went to the college town to find him. 
He met one of his son's classmates, who said he would help 
him find the boy, and then he took the old man through one 
saloon after another, for he knew what the boy would do 
when he was free to do as he pleased; and what that boy 
did when he had nothing to do showed the kind of a boy 
he was. 

And this is always true. Some one has put it in this way: 
"You cannot always tell from the things a man is compelled 
to do for a living what his real character is, what his tastes 
and inclinations are. It is his voluntary choices, what he 
chooses when he is free to choose; what he does when he 
is at liberty to do as he will — these are the things that indi- 
cate the quality of the individual." 

Others have expressed the same truth by saying that if you 
want to know what a man is you must know the kind of air 
castles he builds, for morals are made in leisure time. 

121 



122 MY THREE KEYS 

The history of mankind verifies this truth. Henry Clay, 
the great orator, went out into the barnyard and declaimed 
to the horses and cows; Napoleon, as a boy, used his free 
time to train his playmates as soldiers; Lincoln, after the 
chores were finished, stretched out before the fire and read 
history; Edison, when a newsboy on the train, rigged up a 
workbench in the baggage car so he could experiment with 
electricity. 

There are two or three suggestions which come out of the 
truth — what a man is depends very largely on what he does 
when he has nothing to do. 

First: Cultivate the habit of thinking about the right kind 
of things. When you have nothing to do, you think. What 
do you think about after you have gone to bed and before 
you fall asleep, and when you wake in the morning and before 
you get up ? What do you think about in your idle moments ? 
"As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." Thoughts are like 
dyestuff and give color to one's character. Speer tells us of 
his last call upon Major Whittle as he lay on his deathbed. 
"I asked him how he spent all those weary hours in his 
bed. He said it was not possible for him to write any more, 
he was just depending on what was in his memory and what 
his friends would say to him. He could not sleep much after 
midnight. He would wake then and begin to think about 
Christ. He would think about all the Old Testament types 
and prophecies, of all the sweet things Jesus said, the loving 
things Jesus did when He was here; and of that day when 
the eastern sky shall grow ruddy with the glory of His com- 
ing. He asked me what thought had come to me that day 
that was specially helpful. I told him I had been thinking 
what a great thing it would be if every time a man's mind 
was free to go to its own place, when all the constraints of 
objective duty and pleasure were removed, it would just 
naturally fall in upon Christ, so that Jesus Christ really 
became the master of all our thoughts." 

Paul no doubt had some such idea in his mind when he 



DOING NOTHING 123 

wrote: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are 
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be 
any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things." 

This is one reason why memorizing portions of Scripture 
is helpful ; it gives us something good to think about. 

Second: Cultivate the habit of using scraps of time. "Tell 
me how a young man uses his little ragged edges of time 
after his day's work is done, during the long winter evenings, 
what is revolving in his mind at every opportunity, and I 
will tell you what that young man's future will be." 

Have some good book handy, so that broken bits of time 
need not be wasted. Have your Bible study material at 
hand so that you can turn to it readily. Have a worth-while 
hobby ready to occupy your thoughts. 

Third: Try to realise the everlasting importance of the 
truth that the things you do day by day when you have noth- 
ing to do are the things that are forming your character. 
Phillips Brooks in his sermon on being judged by the law 
of liberty (James 2:12), stated the principle in most im- 
pressive words when he said: 

"By this law we shall be judged. How simple and sublime 
it makes the judgment day ! We stand before the great white 
throne and wait our verdict. We watch the closed lips of the 
Eternal Judge, and our hearts stand still until those lips shall 
open and pronounce our fate; heaven or hell. The lips do 
not open. The Judge just lifts His hand and raises from 
each soul before Him every law of constraint whose pressure 
has been its education. He lifts the laws of constraint and 
their results are manifest. The real intrinsic nature of each 
soul leaps to the surface. Each soul's law of liberty becomes 
supreme. And each soul, without one word of condemnation 
or approval by its own inner tendency, seeks its own place. 
They turn and separate, father from child, brother from 
brother, wife from husband, each with the old habitual re- 
strictions lifted ofr, turns to his own ; one by the inner power 
to the right, another by a like power to the left; these up to 
heaven, and these down to hell. Do we need more? 

"It needs no word, no smile, no frown. The freeing of 



124 MY THREE KEYS 

souls is the judging of souls. A liberated nature dictates 
its own destiny. Could there be a more solemn judgment 
seat? 

"Is it not a fearful thing to be judged by the law of 
liberty?" 

And so I repeat — 

What a man is depends very largely upon what he does 
when he has nothing to do. 



XLI 
JESUS JUDGED BY HIS DISCIPLES 

It is the last night of Jesus' earthly life. He has been 
brought before the high priest to be examined. His enemies 
are trying with all their might to find something wrong with 
Him. They have already made up their minds to have Him 
crucified, but they want to appear to be right in doing it. 
As He stands there before the religious leaders of His 
people, John tells us that the high priest "asked Jesus of His 
disciples" (John 18:19). A good many unfair questions 
must have been asked that night, but this was a fair one: 
"What has your teaching done for the men who have been 
with you? What is the result of your work?" This was 
fair. It is a fair test of a school, or a machine, or a home, 
or a religion, or anything. Tell me what kind of boys come 
out of a school and I will tell you what kind of a school it is. 
Nobody ever buys a machine without first knowing what 
kind of work is turned out by the machine. And this is just 
as true of religion. What kind of men does it make? And 
so Caiaphas was justified in asking Jesus about His disciples. 

And people are justified in asking that question still of 
our churches and our Sunday schools. What kind of a boy 
does that Sunday school turn out? It is the way Sunday 
school boys live and act that tells us what kind of a Sunday 
school it is. And not only that — the Sunday school is a place 
where we learn what the Christian religion is, and usually 
the Sunday school does its work all right; so people are jus- 
tified in looking at us, boys and girls of the Christian Church, 
to learn what Christianity is. Men do not set their watches 
by the sun, though the sun sets the time of the world. They 
set their watches by some clock whose owner has set it by 
the sun. Many people do not look to Jesus or the Bible to 
find out what Christianity is; they look at those of us who 

125 



126 MY THREE KEYS 

profess to be living in accordance with the principles laid 
down in the Bible. Like the high priest they still ask about 
Jesus' disciples, that is, about you and me. 

Dr. Sidney Gulick tells about some factory girls with 
whom he had worked in Japan, and who had become Chris- 
tians; and he says, "Through the changed character and 
intelligence of the girls, many villages from whence they had 
come have changed their attitude towards Christianity." 
And again, "In view of the reformed character of the man 
who had been an inveterate drunkard, but who was now a 
sober and useful citizen, his townsmen began to recognize 
the moral power of Christianity." What kind of people does 
Christianity make? That is the way to judge of its merits. 

The trouble is, we forget how people are watching us. And 
it is too often true of us as it was of the Christians in Rome 
to whom Paul wrote, "The name of God is blasphemed among 
the Gentiles because of you." I was telling a business man 
that another business man with whom he had some trouble 
was a Sunday school superintendent and he exclaimed, "Well, 
I'm sorry for the church !" The Congregationalist printed a 
story which reproduced part of a letter written by a woman 
to some of her relatives, in which she said, "We have had 
a glorious revival of religion. Charles and I have been hope- 
fully converted. Father has gotten very old and helpless, so 
we have sent him to the poorhouse." What kind of an idea 
of Christianity would anyone get from seeing these disciples 
putting their poor old father in the poorhouse ? 

Jesus is never afraid to have His religion tested by the 
results. He answered the high priest's questions by saying, 
"Ask them." What He meant was, "Watch them; see what 
my religion has done for them." The high priest wouldn't 
have gotten a very good idea of the Christian religion from 
seeing Peter that night, as with cursing and swearing he 
declared that he never knew the man; but Peter came back. 
If he could have seen Paul he would have bowed down in 
admiration. But people are not looking at Paul and Peter 



JESUS JUDGED BY HIS DISCIPLES 127 

today; they are watching you and me — watching very often 
when we don't know it. 

The wife of the conductor on a suburban train died after 
a long illness. A few days after the funeral a stranger came 
to the home of the conductor and said, "You don't know 
me, but I've been riding on your train. I knew you had a 
sick wife and I came here to the funeral. I've been watch- 
ing you; you've got something I haven't got and I want to 
know what it is." Then the conductor told him that he was 
a Christian and that it was the love of God in his heart that 
had enabled him to bear his loss and sorrow; it was because 
he knew that all was well that he could bear up under his 
heavy burden. He was the kind of disciple that Jesus was 
willing to be judged by. 

I once heard Dr. McKenzie of Cambridge describe our 
Lord's last interview with Peter in the following words: 

"Simon, do you love me enough to do anything just be- 
cause you love me?" "Yes, Lord, I do." Then Jesus said, 
"Simon, I have died for the world, and the world does not 
know it. Do you see those sheep? They are my sheep. I 
have been feeding them and now I am going out of the 
world; Simon, will you take care of those sheep?" "Yes, 
Lord." "I shall depend upon you, Simon; those sheep will 
starve to death if you do not feed them. I shall not make 
any other provision." "But, Lord, what is John going to do ?" 
"No matter about John, Simon, will you feed those sheep, 
there on the hillside?" "Yes, Lord, I will." 

Then Jesus went to heaven with no more anxiety; and 
if when He reached heaven some archangel had said, "Son 
of God, thou didst die for the world, does the world know 
it?" He would have replied, "Scarcely anyone." "What 
arrangements have you made?" "Simon said he would go 
and tell the world that I have died." "And you trusted 
Simon?" "Yes." "But, Lord, you might as well never have 
left heaven if Simon fails you." "I know it. I have staked 
all on Simon, son of Jonas; I depend upon him." 

Jesus depends on us. He is willing that His religion 
should be judged by us. How are we meeting that wonderful 
honor ? 



XLII 
JESUS IN JERUSALEM 

One day when I was a small boy my father asked me if I 
should like to go to Washington with him. What do you 
think I said? Of course I was glad to go. So away we 
started. It was a wonderful journey. I had never been on a 
sleeping car before and when I saw the colored man change 
the seats into beds it seemed wonderful. After I got into 
bed how strange it was to lie there and look out of the win- 
dow and see the lights flash by, and to think that all the time 
I was in bed ! When I got to Washington, the capital of 
our country, what wonderful sights we saw ! There was 
the patent office where I saw locomotives, engines, bridges, 
and all sorts of machinery made so small you could play with 
them, but just like the real things. And the Treasury build- 
ing with all its money ! There a man told me I could have 
a big bag of gold, but when I tried to take it I couldn't lift it. 
I remember how the older people laughed. We went into 
one room and a man let me hold in my hand a package which 
had $3,000,000 in it — think of it, $3,000,000! I nearly fell 
over. How glad I was to see and do all these wonderful 
things ! 

So it was in the olden times when the people in Palestine 
went up to the capital of their country, where the wonderful 
temple was. They had a song which began, "I was glad when 
they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." 

Jesus as a boy had often been told about Jerusalem and 
how the people went up there every year. At last a day 
came when His father asked Him to go with His mother and 
him. How glad He must have been — what wonderful things 
He expected to see ! Of course He didn't go on a train ; 
I rather think He walked, although it was a long journey. 

128 



JESUS IN JERUSALEM 129 

And when He reached the city there was the beautiful temple, 
of which He had heard so much. Everywhere men and 
women, boys and girls were celebrating the feast of the 
Passover. 

But at last this was over, and they all started back home. 
The first part of the journey there must have been a big 
crowd, which gradually thinned out, as one family after an- 
other took one of the branch roads leading to its part of the 
country. Joseph and Mary thought Jesus was somewhere in 
the party; it was like a big picnic, and the people would 
change companions every now and then. But after they had 
been gone two days and must have been getting pretty near 
home, they looked for Jesus and couldn't find Him. They 
inquired among their friends, but no one remembered having 
seen Him since they left Jerusalem. 

I know how I would have felt if my father had started 
home from Washington without me. One day on that visit 
he wanted me to go to the children's table in the hotel, but 
I wouldn't go because I was afraid to be left alone with 
strangers. 

After trudging all the way back to Jerusalem, and looking 
everywhere for Him, Mary and Joseph at last looked in the 
temple and there they found Jesus, sitting quite unafraid, 
with a lot of ministers and teachers around Him, asking 
them questions and answering the questions they put to Him. 
His mother said, "We've looked everywhere for you; we 
thought you were lost. Why did you treat us this way?" 

Jesus was surprised and could only say, "Why, Mother, 
didn't you know where to look for me? Where else should 
I be but in my Father's house?" 

If you could go anywhere you pleased, where would your 
father and mother be most likely to look for you? 



XLIII 
LOVING GIFTS 

What would you think of something that somebody had 
done that was remembered for nearly two thousand years? 
Can you remember what you did two years ago, or three, 
or four? You see, we forget very easily. Well, here is 
something that has been remembered for almost two thousand 
years, and will be remembered for two thousand years more, 
if this old world lasts that long — a woman made a present 
to Jesus ! And people have been talking about it ever since. 

They were having a dinner party in Simon's house in 
Bethany, and two sisters, Mary and Martha, and their brother 
Lazarus had been invited with Jesus. The brother and his 
sisters lived in Bethany, and their home was really the only 
home Jesus had during the last years of His life. He loved 
to go there and they loved to have Him. Jesus had done a 
wonderful thing for them — Lazarus had died, and Jesus had 
brought him to life again. So they loved Jesus very, very 
much. 

Whenever a guest came into one of those houses, the 
host didn't say, as we do, "Would you like to go upstairs and 
wash your hands?" for usually there wasn't any upstairs. 
It was the custom then for people to wash their feet. This 
was because they wore sandals, which covered only the bot- 
tom of the feet. So, usually, jars of water stood by the 
doorway. Here the guest would sit down, while a servant 
came with a basin, and, after taking off the sandals, bathed 
the feet with cool water and wiped them with a towel. 

Mary had brought with her to the party a little bottle of 
perfume, probably her greatest treasure. The story says it 
was expensive — partly, I suppose, because it was so precious, 
and partly because the bottle was made of alabaster. While 

130 



LOVING GIFTS 131 

they were at dinner, not sitting in chairs as we do but lying 
on couches, with their sandals off, Mary broke this beautiful 
bottle — there was no other way of opening it — and poured the 
fragrant perfume on Jesus' feet. Then she dried them with 
her long hair. Because she loved him she gave him the best 
thing she had ! Jesus was surprised and pleased and said, 
"Whenever people tell about me they will mention this 
beautiful thing that Mary has done." And here we are, tell- 
ing about it nearly two thousand years after. 

Yes, we show our love by giving. Mother goes shopping 
and all the time she is thinking of the children at home. She 
is pretty sure to bring back something for John and Mary 
and Ned. A birthday comes along and we like to make a gift 
to our friend. There is a war when our country needs to 
be defended — and our young men rush to give themselves to 
show their love. 



XLIV 
UNSEEN HELPERS 

There are lots of things we can't see. Did you ever know 
that there are a comb and brush on the leg of every wasp? 
Probably not, but there are. You get a microscope some time 
and look at the wasp's leg and you will see them. Just be- 
cause we can't see a thing doesn't mean it isn't there. 

I was walking past a store window one day, around which 
a crowd had gathered. I looked in to see what the people 
were looking at. On a flat disk a lot of little images were 
moving about as if they were alive. I wondered at first 
how it was done, what made them move, and then I saw that 
underneath was a magnet and the images followed it as 
clockwork moved it about. I couldn't see the magnetism, but 
it was there just the same. 

One time some hunters came out on a hillside and looked 
down into the valley. A strange sight met their eyes. Down 
there lying on the ground near a pool of water were a num- 
ber of animals — deer, bears, and others. They thought they 
couldn't be asleep, yet they were very quiet. When the 
hunters were near enough they saw that the animals were 
dead, every one of them. Then they began to wonder what 
had killed them. No hunter could have shot them; and they 
didn't seem to be hurt. The men started to go to them; but 
they soon found out what it was that had killed the animals. 
A poisonous gas had come up out of the ground, and because 
it was heavier than air it had settled down on the earth. 
When the animals came to the pool to drink, the gas killed 
them. They couldn't see it; the men couldn't see it; but it 
was there just the same. 

Yes, there are a great many things we can't see. I'm sure 
you can think of some besides the ones I've mentioned. 

132 



UNSEEN HELPERS 133 

Once upon a time a wicked king was trying to catch an 
old prophet named Elisha, who had gone into a certain city. 
After Elisha had gone to bed this wicked king came with 
his soldiers and put them all around the city, so that no one 
could get out without being seen. In the morning when 
Elisha's servant got up and went out of doors, he saw every- 
where these soldiers with their chariots and horses, and he 
ran into the house frightened nearly to death and called out, 
"Master, Master, what shall we do? The king has put his 
soldiers all round the city and how can we get away from 
him?" Can't you imagine the old man coming out and 
looking down on the soldiers, and with a smile on his face 
saying to his servant, "There, there, don't be frightened. 
There are a good many of the king's soldiers down there, 
to be sure, but they that are with us are more than they that 
are with them." 

How surprised the servant must have been! We can 
imagine that he said, "More with us than all them! Why, 
there are only two of us and there are thousands of them; 
what can my Master mean?" 

Elisha saw that the servant didn't understand, so he prayed 
to his God, the God in whom he trusted, and said, "Lord, 
open this man's eyes so that he may see." 

At once God answered his prayer; the servant's eyes were 
opened, and when he looked the whole place seemed to be full 
of horses and chariots of fire. They were there all the time, 
only he couldn't see them, for the Bible says, "The angel of 
the Lord campeth round about them that fear him." 

So we may be sure that God is near us even if we can't 
see Him. We must be like Elisha — trust Him, have faith in 
Him, and He will surely help us. 



XLV 
SEEKING AND FINDING 

Did you ever try to find something that you wanted very 
much? One time it became known that there was gold in 
far-off Alaska, and although that part of Alaska is a cold, 
hard country, where there is little to eat and no place to live, 
great crowds of men tramped over the snow and ice seeking 
gold. Lots of them died there but still others rushed after the 
precious metal. They wanted the gold so much that they 
were willing to risk their lives for it. 

How sick people do search for health ! Some of you have 
read the beautiful stories Robert Louis Stevenson wrote. 
All his life he was a sick man and in seeking health he went 
pretty much all over the world till finally he lived on an island 
away out in the Pacific Ocean. He wanted health and he 
sought it everywhere. 

Yes, when anybody wants something very much he seeks 
earnestly for it. 

One time one of the old prophets, speaking for God, said 
to the people, "Seek ye me and ye shall live." He knew 
that the people were sick — sick not in their bodies but in 
their hearts, for they had sinned, and sin is sickness. Now 
God tells us that the way to get well, to get rid of our sick- 
ness, our sin, is to seek Him. "Seek ye me and ye shall live." 

And He wants us to seek Him now, while we are young, 
for it is better to keep well than to look for health after we 
are ill. It is better never to sin than to sin and then seek 
God's forgiveness. 

But you say, "How can we seek God?" Well, first, of 
course, by prayer. Talk to Him; tell Him how much you 
need His strength to keep you from doing wrong, and He 
surely will give it. 

134 



SEEKING AND FINDING 135 

Then you can find out what God wants you to do by read- 
ing the Bible. You seek God by reading and thinking about 
what He has said in that wonderful book. 

And, of course, if you talk with God and seek His help in 
prayer, and read what He has said in the Bible, you ought to 
live as you find He wants you to live. That is seeking God — 
doing what God wants you to do. 

I have read somewhere that a drop of muddy water in a 
black puddle was ashamed of all the filth and called out, "Oh, 
I wish I could get away from all this dirt !" "Well," said 
the breeze, "why not? Ask the sun, he's big and strong." 
"But," the drop said, "the sun is so far away." "No," said 
the breeze, "his rays are all around you ; can't you feel them ?" 
"But the sun is so big and I'm so little," said the drop. "Yes," 
answered the breeze again, "the sun is big and you are little, 
but that won't make any difference to him." "Oh, I'd like to 
ask him, but I'm so black and dirty; the sun is pure and 
beautiful, he'd never do anything for me," complained the 
drop. "Never mind that; ask him." So the muddy drop 
asked the great, strong, clean sun to lift him out of the dirty 
puddle and he did it. Up and up the drop went, drawn by the 
sun's heat, until he became part of a cloud, and then he fell 
back to the earth as a raindrop, and dwelt in a clean sweet 
spring. 

If we seek God He will lift us up and make us sweet and 
clean and pure. 



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